Since measures of well-being are meant to be an exercise in documentation, but also a tool for policies and priorities, we suggest an operative way to use them. We evaluate both technical and social efficiency of countries in producing the Better Life Index (BLI) objectives. To assess the...

We develop a dynamic spatial model in which heterogeneous workers are imperfectly mobile and forward-looking and yet all structural fundamentals can be inverted without assuming that the economy is in a stationary spatial equilibrium. Exploiting this novel feature of the model, we show that the...

Utilizing the 2015 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) that covers 7045 households, we study the effect of grandparents looking after grandchildren on quality of life and life satisfaction of grandparents. We find evidence of important favorable effects of...

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. Deforestation...

This policy note investigates whether the current level of public support to environment-friendly technologies is sufficient to allow European countries to respond to the multiple challenges posed by climate change and other environmental concerns. We first lay out the justifications for...

Global climate change and other environmental challenges require the development of new energy technologies with lower emissions. In the near-term, R&D investments, either by government or the private sector, can bring down the costs of these lower emission technologies. However, the results of...

The paper derives the optimal carbon tax in closed-form from an integrated assessment of climate change. The formula shows how carbon, temperature, and economic dynamics quantify the optimal mitigation effort. The model's descriptive power is comparable to numeric models used in policy advising....

This paper discusses techniques for measuring the incidence of carbon taxes across different household income groups and provides some cross-country estimates of these effects for selected advanced countries. The general message of this paper is that distributional concerns should not...

The economics of climate change involves a vast array of uncertainties, complicating both the analysis and development of climate policy. This study presents the results of the first comprehensive study of uncertainty in climate change using multiple integrated assessment models. The study looks...

Economic models of climate policy (or policies to combat other environmental problems) typically neglect psychological adaptation to changing life circumstances. People may adapt or become more sensitive, to different degrees, to a deteriorated environment. The present paper addresses these...