The current global trends lead to fulfilment of specified environmental and economic objectives in all sectors of national economies. Buildings form a basic pillar of smart cities concept where all life processes and nerve centres of social life are read, in order to radically improve quality of life, opportunity, prosperity, social and economic development, thanks to the use of the new technol...

Many health improving interventions in low-income countries are extremely good value for money. So why has it often proven difficult to obtain political backing for highly cost-effective interventions such as vaccinations, treatments against diarrhoeal disease in children, and preventive policies such as improved access to clean water, or policies curtailing tobacco consumption? We use economic...

Since about 1990, many developing and transition countries have undertaken market-oriented reforms in their electric power sectors. Despite the widespread adoption of a standard policy model, reform processes and outcomes have often failed to meet expectations. Drawing on an extensive literature review and case studies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, this paper describes com...

Bundling, the strategy of marketing products in particular combinations, is growing in significance given the boom in high technology and eCommerce. The seller in these instances typically has to decide which form of bundling to pursue and how to price the bundle and the individual products. We have written this chapter with two main objectives. First, we have sought to draw a set of key guidel...

In the past few years there has been a lots of research on the topic of environmental quality and economic growth. This paper describes the theory of Environmental Kuznets Curve and illustrates the concept with special reference to some developed countries. One of the objectives of this study is to test the shape of the relationship between income and environmental degradation. We use regressio...

The extraordinarily rapid rate of growth of the Irish economy in the past decade has provided many benefits in terms of increased living standards and higher employment levels. However, economic growth has also resulted in increased pressures on the environment. This paper sets out to examine how the environment has fared over the period of unprecedented economic growth, and specifically, if th...

The increasing international trend in favour of market based economic development strategies has significantly affected the options available to central and local governments to influence the ways in which land is transformed from rural to urban use and developed for residential and other functions. Under these conditions, it is vital that government agencies increase their understanding of the...

The Government of Burkina Faso has recently been conducting important macroeconomic changes, aiming at encouraging the economic growth of the country. In order to maintain this growth, the Government has put in place a transportation program to improve the efficiency and safety of the road network. This paper documents the study carried out in 2000 on the safety improvement of rural roads in Bu...

Human well-being highly depends on ecosystem services and this dependence is expected to increase in the future with increasing population and economic growth. Studies that investigate trade-offs between ecosystem services are urgently needed for informing policy-makers. We examine the trade-offs between a provisioning (revenues from timber selling) and regulating (carbon storage and sequestrat...