Judged by the principle of intertemporal Pareto optimality, insecure property rights and the greenhouse effect both imply overly rapid extraction of fossil carbon resources. A gradual expansion of demand-reducing public policies -- such as increasing ad-valorem taxes on carbon consumption or...

Simplifying entry regulation has been a popular reform since the publication of Djankov et al (2002). The inclusion of business entry indicators in the World Bank’s Doing Business project has led to an acceleration in reform: in 2003-2008, 193 reforms took place in 116 countries. A large...

Many resource-rich countries have poor economic performance and suffer from negative genuine saving rates, especially if they have many rival factions and badly functioning legal systems. We attempt to shed light on these stylized facts by analyzing a power struggle about the control of natural...

The paper illustrates how one may assess our comprehensive uncertainty about the various relations in the entire chain from human activity to climate change. Using a modified version of the RICE model of the global economy and climate, we perform Monte Carlo simulations, where full sets of...

The paper illustrates how one may assess our comprehensive uncertainty about the various relations in the entire chain from human activity to climate change. Using a modified version of the RICE model of the global economy and climate, we perform Monte Carlo simulations, where full sets of...

The Millennium Declaration set 2015 as the target date for halving the number of people living in extreme poverty. Exceptional progress in some developing countries makes achieving that goal globally a realistic possibility. However, many countries will fall far short, and up to 1 billion people...

Sustainable development is a concept strictly connected with basic needs of the poorest populations. Using a macroeconomic measure of sustainability such the World Bank's Genuine Saving and a measure of quality of life such the United Nations' Human Development Index, we build a model in order...

As a result of the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), Chile conquered Peruvian and Bolivian territories rich in nitrates and guano. We conduct econometric tests for structural breaks in the time series of the government bonds for Chile and Peru between 1876 and 1890 in order to examine the...

A survey of 209 Chimane Amerindian households in 18 villages in the Bolivian rain forest was done to examine the role of tenure security and private time preference on the clearance of old-growth forest. Results of Tobit regressions suggest that conflict with abutters was associated with more...

Agricultural development in the hill areas of Southern Italy has shown different trends in the last three decades. This difference in not evident if one looks only at official statistics, since they frequently are not accurate and obsolete. On the contrary, it shows up rather clearly if one...