Does temperature affect economic performance? Has temperature always affected social welfare through its impact on physical and cognitive function? While many economic studies have explored the indirect links between climate and welfare (e.g. agriculture, conflict, sea-level rise), few address...

This research examines the climatic origins of the diffusion of Neolithic agriculture across countries and archaeological sites. The theory suggests that a foraging society s history of climatic shocks shaped the timing of its adoption of farming. Specifically, as long as climatic disturbances...

The UNFCCC process of negotiating multilateral carbon emissions reductions thus far has focused on approximately equiproportional cuts in annual carbon emissions by country along the lines of the Kyoto Protocol agreement. But now, with the objective of involving large developing countries such...

In the paper we discuss China's participation in both the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations on a post-Kyoto global climate change regime currently under way and out beyond Copenhagen in further negotiations likely to follow. China is now both the largest and most rapidly growing carbon emitter, and...

In a world where the prospects of a global agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions are bleak, the idea of using trade policy as an implicit regulation of foreign emission sources has gained many supporters in countries contemplating unilateral climate policies. Embodied carbon tariffs tax...

This paper discusses the role that trade can potentially play in both negotiating and operating a post Kyoto/post 2012 global climate policy regime. As an addition to the bargaining set for a global climate negotiation, trade in principle widens the range of jointly beneficial potential outcomes...

Between 1990 and 2008, emissions of the most common air pollutants from U.S. manufacturing fell by 60 percent, even as real U.S. manufacturing output grew substantially. This paper develops a quantitative model to explain how changes in trade, environmental regulation, productivity, and consumer...

Environmental Engel curves (EECs) plot the relationship between households’ incomes and the pollution embodied in the goods and services they consume. They provide a basis for estimating the degree to which observed environmental improvements, which come in part from changing consumption...

Social capital can facilitate community governance, but not all social capital is alike. We distinguish bonding social capital (within a village) from bridging social capital (between villages), and we compare their effects on the management of a common pool resource. We develop a theoretical...

In many regulated markets, private, third-party auditors are chosen and paid by the firms that they audit, potentially creating a conflict of interest. This paper reports on a two-year field experiment in the Indian state of Gujarat that sought to curb such a conflict by altering the market...