A model is analysed in which a sovereign country has independent obligations to repay a creditor bank and to keep an environmental treaty. It is shown that the linkage of both obligations through a cross-default contract may reduce the sovereign risk attached to both the debt and the...

Consider a country possessing a specific production factor in fixed quantity, producing in combination with land a stream of services through time. Some of these services are consumed domestically. The bulk of it, however, is consumed world-wide. Despite the services the country provides to the...

A situation is analysed in which two countries negotiate the financing of the incremental costs which accrue if one of them switches from a non-sustainable onto a sustainable development path. The other country's incentive to pay arises as it benefits from the developing country's environmental...

Much of what may be coined the creeping degradation of the environment is due to economic projects which are subject to public approval. The erection of buildings, the siting of factories, all require permission from bureaucracies. To answer the question whether there is too much or not enough...

A folk theorem in environmental economics suggests that in the presence of transboundary environmental spillovers international negotiations may improve on environmental quality. More so, if side-payments according to the victim-pays principle are undertaken, environmental safeguards agreed upon...

An explanation is given why communist economies usually react smoothly but sometimes very dramatically to seemingly minor changes in the political and economic environment. In this paper such dramatic reactions materialize in a sudden clamp-down on individual freedom and sudden economic...

Environmental norms seem to be on the upsurge everywhere. Norm-orientation is, however, neglected in neoclassical economics which is fixed on homo economicus as the model of human behaviour. The paper addresses the question whether homo economicus needs to give way to a norm-oriented concept in...

The protection of the global environment is impeded by multilateral externalities which the international community attempts to bring under control by entering into international agreements. International agreements, however, can suffer from non-compliance and free-riding behaviour by sovereign...

Krugman's verdict that competitiveness of countries is a largely meaningless concept is a serious misjudgement of the economics profession. Countries compete for the mobile factors of production, most importantly for capital and technology. The exit-option of these factors and of firms changes...