In this Paper we argue that the political incentives that resource endowments generate are the key to understanding whether or not they are a curse. We show: (1) politicians tend to over-extract natural resources relative to the efficient extraction path because they discount the future too...

This paper explores the implications for trade relations of the greening of world politics. It modifies the standard theory of changing comparative advantages in a growing world economy to show the effects on trade of taking into account the fact that the demand for domestic environmental...

International trade and environmental regulation are interdependent. Central and East European Countries (CEECs) are now being integrated in international markets, and the question arises how environmental issues should be taken account of during this process and which institutional framework is...

We consider the decision of an agent with time inconsistent preferences to undertake an irreversible investment that yields an uncertain current benefit and a delayed cost. We show that, if the flow of information revealed between periods when the investment is postponed is sufficiently high,...

We analyze the decision of individuals with time inconsistent preferences who undertake irreversible activities yielding either a current cost and a future benefit or a current benefit and a future cost. We first show that, when benefits come earlier than costs, the individual faces a...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this paper analyses the effects of spending part of adolescents’ leisure time on playing music or doing sports, or both. We find that while playing music fosters educational outcomes compared to doing sports, particularly so for girls and...

There is little evidence in support of the main economic rationale for regulating athletic doping: that doping reduces fan interest. The introduction of random testing for performance-enhancing drugs (PED) by Major League Baseball (MLB) offers unique data to investigate the issue. The...

The favorite-longshot bias describes the longstanding empirical regularity that betting odds provide biased estimates of the probability of a horse winning—longshots are overbet, while favorites are underbet. Neoclassical explanations of this phenomenon focus on rational gamblers who overbet...

The NCAA college football ratings, in which the "so-called" national champion is determined, has been plagued by controversies the last few years. The difficulty arises because there is a need to make a complete ranking of teams even though each team has a different schedule of games with a...

We study the intermediary role of tour operators in the market for package tourism. Intermediaries often arise in order to facilitate trade in markets characterized by asymmetric information. In the travel industry policy-makers have tried to address information asymmetries by providing hotel...