In this paper we argue that strong political economy forces explain the rush of the EU to expand eastwards. We use a model of vertical product differentiation in order to claim that technologically- advanced EU firms (residing in high-income member countries) prefer a mutual market-opening with...

What factors determine whether it is optimal with one or more technologies in a decarbonized road transport sector, and what policies should governments choose? We investigate these questions theoretically and numerically through a static, partial equilibrium model for the road transport market....

This paper examines stability of international climate agreements for carbon abatement under an optimal transfer rule and renegotiations. The optimal transfer rule suggested to stabilise international environmental agreements (Weikard 2005, Carraro, Eyckmans and Finus 2006) is no longer optimal...

Cost-benefit analyses require comparing costs and benefits that occur at different points in time. Doing so, however, creates conflicts between short-term considerations a discounting scheme has to be consistent with observed behaviours and long-term ethical issues a discounting scheme must not...

The determinants of incentive regulation are a key issue in industrial policy. I study an asymmetric information model of incentive rules selection by a political principal endowed with an information-gathering technology whose efficiency increases with the effort exerted by two accountable...

In this paper we investigate the effects of tax competition in a simple endogenous growth model with elastic labor supply. Our analysis focuses on two issues. First, we show that all taxes, i.e. on capital, labor, and consumption, are harmful for growth. Second, we derive the optimal tax policy....