There is a well-developed literature of project evaluation based on the assumption that a project is "efficient" if losers could, potentially, be compensated by gainers. In sharp contrast, relatively little systematic work has been done to develop a corresponding economics of project evaluation under actual compensation criteria. This is largely because the amount of compensation that is actual...

Slash-and-burn agriculture in poor tropical countries is one of the main causes of deforestation, leading to environmental costs and to potential externality effects on lowland agricultural productivity. Under innovative environmental policies, direct conservation payments to farmers are starting to be implemented to induce them to abandon slash-and-burn agriculture as well as the use of forest...

BACKGROUND Providing benefits and payments to participants in health research, either in cash or in kind, is a common but ethically controversial practice. While much literature has concentrated on appropriate levels of benefits or payments, this paper focuses on less well explored ethical issues around the nature of study benefits, drawing on views of community members living close to an inter...

Gender Pay Gaps among Highly Educated Professionals: Compensation Components Do Matter Making use of panel data from a survey of highly educated professionals, gender pay gaps are explored with regard to total compensation as well as to individual compensation components. The results indicate meaningful male-female wage differentials for this quite homogeneous group of people working in one spe...

Severance pay programs can reduce political opposition and minimize the social costs of labor redundancies. In Egypt, only voluntary programs are feasible because legal limitations preclude layoffs and strong organized labor groups oppose any weakening of job security protections. A common problem with voluntary severance programs, however, is that they tend to overpay workers relative to the w...

Economic growth has multiplied the environmental challenges faced by the People’s Republic of China but has also created opportunities, by increasing available funding for environmental management and conservation. At the nexus of these countervailing trends, policy makers have been experimenting with new approaches to environmental management under the broad heading of “eco-compensation”. Many...