We study the optimal R&D trajectory in a setting where new technologies are never perfect backstops in the sense that there is no perfectly clean technology that eventually solves the pollution problem once and for all. New technologies have stings attached, i.e. each emits a specific stock...

The literature on environmental R&D frequently studies innovation as a two-stage process, with a single R&D event leading from a conventional polluting technology to a perfectly clean backstop. We allow for uncertainty in innovation in that the new technology may turn out to generate a new...

We conduct a large-scale field experiment with 2,440 subjects in which we exogenously vary the price of contributing to the closest empirical counterpart of an infinitely large public good, climate change mitigation. We find that the price effect is robust and negative, but quantitatively weak,...

Pestizide ermöglichen der Landwirtschaft gesteigerte Erträge, sie bergen jedoch auch Risiken für die menschliche Gesundheit und die Umwelt. Um diese Risiken zu begrenzen, müssen sie in einem Risikobewertungsverfahren ihre Sicherheit nachweisen, bevor sie zugelassen werden können. Die...

The success of global climate policies over the coming decades depends on the diffusion of 'green' technologies. This requires that international environmental agreements (IEAs) and trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) interact productively.Using a simple and tractable model, we...

How should tort law deal with agents that employ novel and imperfectly understood technologies that later turn out to involve harm? There is no agreement among different legal systems whether strict liability or negligence rules should govern these so-called 'development risks'. The law-and-...

Evidence from public good game experiments holds the promise of instructive and cost-effective insights to inform environmental policy-making, for example on climate change mitigation. To fulfill the promise, such evidence needs to demonstrate generalizability to the specific policy context....

This paper studies monitoring and punishment behavior by second and third parties in a cooperation experiment with endogenous information structures: Players are uninformed whether the target player cooperated or defected at the cooperation stage, but can decide to resolve the information...

In the climate policy debate, a rhetoric has evolved that attributes a high potential to "voluntary climate action". We turn to the population of Germany, the fourth largest cumulative GHG emitter, to obtain an Internet-)representative estimate of the individual willingness to abate one ton of...

Solar radiation management (SRM) technologies are considered one of the likeliest forms of geoengineering. If developed, a future generation could deploy them to limit the damages caused by the atmospheric carbon stock inherited from the current generation, despite their negative side effects....