Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are exerting growing pressure on firms to eliminate product components (such as palm oil) that are harmful to the environment (such as rainforests) or replace such components with NGO-certified sustainable components. Under which conditions does NGO pressure...

We empirically analyze the effect of UN and US economic sanctions on life expectancy and its gender gap in target countries. Our sample covers 98 less developed and newly industrialized countries over the period 1977–2012. We employ a matching approach to account for the endogeneity of...

I model the ocean as an array of lines set within a two-dimensional frame, and show how the Exclusive Economic Zone emerged as an equilibrium in customary international law. I find that custom codifies the efficient Nash equilibrium of enclosure for nearshore fisheries. For highly migratory and...

Publication and citation rankings have become major indicators of the scientific worth of universities and countries, and determine to a large extent the career of individual scholars. We argue that such rankings do not effectively measure research quality, which should be the essence of...

This paper analyzes whether nation-state governments can increase their credibility by becoming members of international organizations. Credibility is an important asset because it determines the real interest rate and is expected to have an important impact on investment and growth. It is...

We argue that membership in International Organizations (IOs) is an important determinant of FDI inflows. To the extent that membership restricts a country from pursuing policies that are harmful to investors, it can signal low political risk. Using data over the 1971-2005 period, we find that...

Linkage of cap-and-trade systems is typically advocated by economists on a general analogy with the beneficial linking of free-trade areas and on the specific grounds that linkage will ensure cost effectiveness among the linked jurisdictions. An appropriate and widely accepted specification for...

We show that warm-glow motives in provision by competing suppliers can lead to inefficient charity selection. In these situations, discretionary donor choices can promote efficient charity selection even when provision outcomes are non-verifiable. Government funding arrangements, on the other...

We describe a dynamic model of costly information sharing, where private information affecting collective-value actions is transmitted by social proximity. Individuals make voluntary contributions towards the provision of a pure public good, and information transmission about quality of...

In a spatial competition setting there is usually a non-negative relationship between competition and quality. In this paper we offer a novel mechanism whereby competition leads to lower quality. This mechanism relies on two key assumptions, namely that the providers are motivated and...