International climate negotiations have been troubled by mutual mistrust. At the same time, a hope seems to prevail that once enough countries moved forward, others would follow suit. If the abatement game faced by climate negotiators is a Prisoners' Dilemma, and countries are narrowly...

Many people remain opposed to climate change mitigation policies. This opposition is an obstacle to policy action and, therefore, important to understand. We explore how unusually high temperatures (heat waves), which observably increase the salience of climate change-related issues, affect...

We study the impact of global climate change on the prevalence of tropical diseases using a heterogeneous agent dynamic general equilibrium model. In our framework, households can take actions (e.g., purchasing bednets or other goods) that provide partial protection from disease. However, these...

This research explores the origins of loss aversion and the variation in its prevalence across regions, nations and ethnic group. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the evolution of loss aversion in the course of human history can be traced to the adaptation of...

This paper sheds light on the apparent paradox, wherein populations adversely affected by climatic conditions fail to migrate as much as would otherwise be expected. Drawing on Hirschman's treatise on Exit, Voice and Loyalty, we develop a simple model, which highlights the theoretical case for a...

Though many in the general public are concerned about climate change, most are unaware that agriculture and food production accounts for about one quarter of aggregate green house emissions and therefore, diet change is one of the most effective ways that individuals can reduce their climate...

This paper investigates the long-run effects of climate change on conflict by examining cooling from 1400-1900 CE, a period that includes most of the Little Ice Age. We construct a geo-referenced and digitized database of conflicts in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East from 1400-1900, which...

We combine exogenous variation in temperature at the county-day level in the U.S. with daily time use data to examine the effect of temperature on joint time use. We show that low temperatures reduce time spent with friends but increase time spent with family. Conversely, high temperatures...

We study the process of endogenous democratization from inefficient oligarchic systems in an economy where heterogeneous individuals can get involved in predation activities. The features of democracies are shown to be crucially related to the conditions under which democratization initially...