This paper argues that whether genetic modification of crops is seen as radically different or simply a further step of ‘traditional’ breeding techniques affects the perception of the associated benefits and risks of their commercialisation and the wider context scrutinised to assess...

The Australian Government has produced a CO2-equivalent tax proposal with a difference, it is a short prelude to an emission trading scheme that will allow the increasing rate of emissions to continue, while being a net cost to the Treasury. That cost extends to allowing major emitters to make...

This paper compares more direct measures of the institutional environment with both the instability proxies used by Barro (1991) and the Gastil indices, by comparing their effects both on growth and private investment. The results provide substantial support for the position that the...

This paper makes two contributions to the literature. First, it introduces a new, easily accessed and objective measure of the enforceability of contracts and the security of property rights. Second, it uses this measure to provide additional and more direct evidence about the importance of...

Agricultural crop production is highly dependent upon environmental conditions among which air quality plays a central role. Various air pollutants have been identified as a potential influence on commercial crops including SO2, NOx, O3 and CO2. In particular, ozone in the lower atmosphere has...

Economic models cannot give us the information society needs to define the set of possible future scenarios facing the world. Thus "optimal" economic plans are susceptible to being overwhelmed by feedbacks of which humans are ignorant as economic systems increasingly stress ecosystems. These...

We reconstruct a dataset used by Persson and Tabellini (AER, 1994) to test the robustness of their finding that inequality reduces income growth, but only in democracies. We find that their result is highly sensitive to the use of data sources on both democracy and inequality. When we substitute...