This article tests the hypothesis that democracies exhibit stronger environmental commitment than non-democracies using multivariate econometric techniques. A number of proxy variables are used in lieu of environmental commitment, a non-observable variable. Strong evidence is found that...

We examine the impact of environmental regulation on the international diffusion of new technology through the patent system. We employ a dataset of automobile emission standards between 1992 and 2007 and corresponding data on cross-border patent inflows of technologies developed to comply with...

This paper argues that it is countries’ historical experience with democracy, the democratic capital stock, rather than current levels of democracy that determines current climate change policies. Empirical evidence using data starting as far back as year 1800 for 87 countries, which together...

One cannot expect developing countries to have the same environmental standards as developed ones. Standards can be at their efficiency levels and yet be lower than in developed countries due to differences in emissions, in the pollution absorptive capacity and in the intensity of environmental...

There is an established theoretical and empirical case-study literature arguing that environmental pressure groups have a real impact on pollution levels. Our original contribution to this literature is to provide the first systematic quantitative test of the strength of environmental...

The effect of left-wing party strength and corporatism on air pollution levels in up to 21 OECD countries over the period 1980 or 1990-1999 is tested with both fixed-effects and random-effects estimators. Controlling for scale, composition, technique as well as aggregate time effects, robust...

We examine the impact of environmental regulation on the international diffusion of new technology through the patent system. We employ a dataset of automobile emission standards between 1992 and 2007 and corresponding data on cross-border patent inflows of technologies developed to comply with...

The literatures and debates on human development on the one hand and sustainability on the other share much in common. Human development is essentially what sustainability advocates want to sustain and without sustainability, human development is not true human development. Yet the two strands...

This article reviews existing linkages between the two broad concepts of human development and sustainability and discusses ways in which the often separate literatures can learn from each other. It proposes a practical way in which the measurements of human development and sustainability can be...