We study the effectiveness of emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol with respect to reducing CO₂ emissions. Using country-level and US state-level panel data and employing the synthetic control method, we find very little evidence for an emission reduction effect for the major emitters among...

We empirically analyze the formation of international environmental agreements within a political economy framework. We develop a theoretical model of state dependent net benefits of ratification that predicts strategic behavior with respect to the timing of ratification and allows us to relate...

We use recent developments in the empirics of comparative case studies to analyze the effect of binding emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol on the development of CO2 emissions of seven major Annex B countries. In particular, we investigate whether committing to a specific greenhouse gas...

Every year, riots cause a substantial number of fatalities in less-advanced countries. This paper explores the role of agricultural output shocks in explaining riots. Our theory predicts a negative relationship between the level of rioting and the deviation of the actual output from the average...

The author analyzes the optimal investment in environmental protection in a model of an infinite series of non-overlapping hyperbolically discounting agents. He shows that without a commitment mechanism society is eventually stuck in a situation where all agents prefer further investment in the...

In this paper, we extend the well known result that hyperbolically discounting agents tend to postpone costs into the future. In a simple model we show that, without commitment to the ex ante optimal plan, no investment in environmental protection is undertaken over the whole time horizon, no...

The author analyzes the optimal investment in environmental protection in a model of non-overlapping hyperbolically discounting agents. He shows that, in the long run and in the absence of a commitment device, society is stuck in a situation where all agents prefer further investments, yet no...

In this paper we investigate the reasons why integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) fail to achieve their conservation goals. We develop a bio-economic model of open access land and wildlife exploitation, which is consistent with many farming and hunting societies living in...

We study the optimal control of a pollutant that accumulates with a delay.We find that optimal paths are, in general, non-monotonic and oscillatory, but monotonic if the objective function is additively separable. Hence, using additively separable objective functions as an approximation to a...