Critics of modern macroeconomics often raise concerns about unwarranted welfare conclusions and data mining. This paper illustrates these concerns with a thought experiment, based on the debate in environmental economics about the appropriate discount rate in climate change analyses: I set up an...

Champions of sustainable growth often call for more durable production technologies with less capital depreciation. As investment in more durable capital is encouraged by lower interest rates, we investigate whether policy makers can steer the economy towards a path with low interest rates in...

Earlier meta-analyses of the economic impact of climate change are updated with more data, with three new results: (1) The central estimate of the economic impact of global warming is always negative. (2) The confidence interval about the estimates is much wider. (3) Elicitation methods are most...

Critics of modern macroeconomics often raise concerns about unwarranted welfare conclusions and data mining. This paper illustrates these concerns with a thought experiment, based on the debate in environmental economics about the appropriate discount rate in climate change analyses: I set up an...

The production of natural gas is strongly increasing around the world. Long-run negative external effects of extraction are understudied and often ignored in social) cost-benefit analyses. One important example is that natural gas extraction leads to soil subsidence and subsequent induced...

The nature of energy and material resources in an endogenous growththeory framework isclarified. This involves three modifications of the conventionaltheory. Firstly, multiple feedbackmechanisms or “growth engines” are identified. Secondly, a productionfunction distinguishesbetween resource...

Mine-related transport infrastructure specializes in connecting mines to the coast, and not so much to neighboring countries. This is most clearly seen in developing countries, whose transport infrastructure was originally designed to facilitate the export of natural resources in colonial times....

The need to absorb windfalls gains and manage them appropriately has been discussed extensively by academics and policy makers alike. We explore the role of the financial sector in intermediating these windfalls. Controlling for the level of financial development, inflation, GDP growth and...

Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...

Can oil discovery shocks affect the demand for protectionism? An intertemporal model of Dutch disease indicates that if the tradable sector is politically dominant then an oil discovery can induce protectionism. If the economy is also credit constrained, this effect is intensified upon...