In a duopoly industry with environmentally differentiated products, we examine the effects of introducing a mandatory environmental quality standard on firms' environmental quality choices, profits, and the average environmental quality offered by the industry. We show that at low standards,...

The standard neoclassical growth model with Cobb-Douglas production predicts a monotonically declining saving rate, when reasonably calibrated. Ample empirical evidence, however, shows that the transition paths of most countries' saving rates exhibit a statistically significant hump-shaped...

We investigate the relationships between water quality and socioeconomic factors in California at the county level for the years 1993 to 2006 using 24 water quality indicators coming from seven different types of water bodies. We estimate these relationships using three classes of models: the...

This paper takes sustainability to be a matter of intergenerational welfare equality and examines whether an optimal development path can also be sustainable. It argues that the general "zero-net-aggregate-investment" condition for an optimal development path to be sustainable in the sense of...

The standard neoclassical growth model with Cobb-Douglas production predicts a monotonically declining saving rate, when reasonably calibrated. Ample empirical evidence, however, shows that the transition path of a country’s saving rate exhibits a rising or non-monotonic pattern. In important...

When it comes to environmental quality preferences, it is popularly believed that Democrats (and more generally, liberals) are “green” while Republicans (conservatives) are “brown”. Does empirical evidence support this popular belief? We test the hypothesis that regional political...