Theories explaining government size and its consequences are of two varieties. The first portrays government as a provider of public goods and a corrector of externalities. The second associates larger governments with bureaucratic inefficiency and special-interest-group influence. What...

Much of the International Relations literature assumes that there is a “depth versus participation” dilemma in international politics: shallower international agreements attract more countries and greater depth is associated with less participation. We argue that this conjecture is too...

Civil society is commonly assumed to have a positive effect on international cooperation. This paper sheds light on one important facet of this assumption: we examine the impact of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) on ratification behavior of countries vis-à-vis international...

We empirically test existing theories on the provision of public goods, in particular air quality, using data on sulfur dioxide (SO2) concentrations from the Global Environment Monitoring Projects for 107 cities in 42 countries from 1971 to 1996. The results are as follows: First, we provide...

Despite many claims by high-ranking policymakers and some scientists that climate change breeds violent conflict, the existing empirical literature has so far not been able to identify a systematic, causal relationship of this kind. This may either reflect de facto absence of such a...

We study the behavior of defense spending in Switzerland over 1975-2001. Our main interest is in determining how neutrality in international affairs (non-membership in military alliances) affects defense spending. We find that neutrality is associated with a perception of lower levels of...

Restrictive policies aimed at reducing the likelihood of bank failure during recessions tend to increase the probability of a credit crunch. In this paper we infer governments' policy responses to this dilemma by studying the cyclical behavior of bank capital in 1369 banks from 28 OECD countries...