This paper surveys the state of the economic literature examining the aggregate impacts of natural disasters. The paper reviews the main disaster data sources available, discusses the determinants of the direct effects of disasters, and distinguishes between short- and long-run indirect effects....

Twenty years on from the Rio ’92 conference, we must face the fact that there have been a few successes but more failures. Scientific complexity, uncertainty, short-termism inherent in politics, the free-rider problem, and issues of fairness are part of the explanation for the lack of...

Global climate change stands out from most environmental problems because it will span generations and force us to think in new ways about intergenerational fairness. It involves the delicate problem of complex coordination between countries on a truly global scale. As long as fossil fuels are...