Two trends have marked the politico-economic discussion in many industrialized countries in recent years. On the one hand, international production, workplace decentralization, shareholder orientation and generous manager remuneration have changed the face of firms in the primary economy. On the...

In contrast to much recent work regarding the causes of European unemployment, in this paper, we emphasise the importance of capital accumulation. But unlike the few previous studies which have examined the relationship between capital accumulation and unemployment, we argue that what matters...

This paper explains how, in the context of incomplete coordination among all countries, unilateral policies that might at first sight seem pro-green could actually turn out to harm the global environment. The free-riding motives and the difficulty of reaching an effective international...

This paper explores how a principal with time-inconsistent preferences invests optimally in technology or capital. If the current principal prefers her future self to save more, she can increase current investments complementary to future savings and decrease investments in the strategic...

This paper deals with three aspects of spectacular oil price episodes such as the one witnessed in 2008. First, the concept of temporary explosiveness is proposed as an empirical method for capturing this type of behavior. The application of a recently proposed recursive unit root test shows...

I estimate the level of emissions cost pass-through to hourly wholesale electricity prices in Germany, based on spot market data. I control for contemporaneous shocks to demand and supply by constructing a detailed supply curve for fossil generation, and intersecting it with residual demand for...

This paper contributes to the green paradox literature by using a resource extraction framework with heterogeneous energy sources. A key feature of the model is a capacity constrained green backstop resource, which implies the simultaneous use of the expensive backstop resource and the cheaper...

Economists have analyzed potential for damages from climate change from theoretical analyses and with Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). Analytical models typically write damages as a function of the carbon stock, while IAMs typically view damages as based on temperatures. In this paper, we...

Motivated by tropical deforestation, we analyze (i) a novel theory of resource extraction, (ii) the optimal conservation contract, (iii) when the donor prefers contracting with central rather than local governments, and (iv) how the donor’s presence may induce institutional change....