The optimal reaction to a pending productivity shock of which the expected arrival time increases with global warming is to accumulate more precautionary capital to smooth consumption and to levy a carbon tax, proportional to the marginal hazard of a catastrophe, to curb the risk of climate...

We consider a model in which two countries are involved in arms accumulation. The West is a decentralized market economy whose government uses optimal taxation to provide a public good, defense. The East is a centrally planned economy. Utility depends on consumption, leisure and defense; defense...

Unilateral second-best carbon taxes are analysed in a two-period, two-country model with international trade in final goods, oil and bonds. Acceleration of global warming resulting from a future carbon tax is large if the price elasticities of oil demand are large and that of oil supply is...

Many countries have failed to use natural resource wealth to promote growth and development. They have been damaged by volatility of revenues, have failed to save a sufficiently high proportion of their resource revenues and failed to make high return investments to support diversification of...

In this paper we develop techniques for measuring the trade policy equivalent of domestic distortions, using a distance function approach. Our measure, the Trade Restrictiveness Index, is shown to equal the uniform tariff which is welfare-equivalent to a given pattern of domestic taxes and...

Cross-country evidence is presented on resource dependence and the link between volatility and growth. First, growth depends negatively on volatility of unanticipated output growth independent of initial income per capita, the average investment share, initial human capital, trade openness, the...

The tensions between books and book markets as expressions of culture and books as products in profit-making businesses are analysed and insights from the theory of industrial organisation are given. Governments intervene in the market for books through laws concerning prices of books, grants...

This paper studies regimes of managed exchange rates for a small open economy with an integrated capital market, rational expectations in financial markets, sluggish nominal wages and prices, and supply shocks that follow a Brownian motion. Each regime can be characterized by the degree to which...

This paper discusses the problems the Dutch economy has experienced during the last seven years, pinpoints problems for future developments of the Dutch economy, and surveys the political-economic debate in the Netherlands. The focus is on the unemployment problem, still unsolved and therefore...

Democratic countries with substantial inequality and where people believe that success depends on connections and luck induce political support for high tax rates and generous welfare states. Traditional wisdom is that such policies harm the economy, but there is not much evidence that countries...