Crude oil prices have been fluctuating over time and by a large range. It is the disorganization of oil price series that makes it difficult to deduce the changing trends of oil prices in the middle- and long-terms and predict their price levels in the short-term. Following a price-state...

We introduce endogenous investments for increasing conventional and non-conventional oil extraction capacity in the integrated assessment model WITCH. The international price of oil emerges as the Nash equilibrium of a non-cooperative game. When carbon emissions are not constrained, oil is used...

We estimate a structural model of OECD countries in which GDP and CO2 emissions are endogenous. We use the estimated model to simulate the price of tradable CO2 permits and the efficiency gains from trade. Our estimated prices are high, relative to previous estimates, and the efficiency gains...

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autocracies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well, others such as the Latin American...

China is appraised to have the world's largest exploitable reserves of shale gas, although several legal, regulatory, environmental and investment-related issues will likely restrain its scope. China's capacity to successfully face these hurdles and produce commercial shale gas will have a...

We investigate the role of networks of military alliances in preventing or encouraging wars between groups of countries. A country is vulnerable to attack if there is some fully-allied group of countries that can defeat that country and its (remaining) allies based on a function of their...

There exists a growing body of literature which looks at export decisions made by firms. Most studies focus on developed countries and do not explore whether different behavioral patterns prevail over the firm size distribution. This paper aims at filling this gap in the literature by analyzing...

This research examines the economic origins of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade...

This paper revisits the empirical evidence about the link between firms’ performance and their international status, based on a large sample of Italian enterprises. To this purpose, we merged two waves of the Capitalia survey (1998-2000, and 2001-2003) retrieving firm level data for roughly...

USA, Canada and Argentina have challenged before the World Trade Organisation the European Communities’ (EC) denial of Genetically Modified (GM) product imports, which took place from 1998 to 2004 . Against this background, the goal of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we will determine which...