In a multi-country model with mobile capital and global pollution this paper analyzes the stability of self-enforcing environmental agreements (IEAs) when the coalition formed by the signatory countries plays Nash. In accordance with previous environmental literature we show that there exists a...

We investigate whether public provision of positional goods can be a sensible instrument to address inefficiencies arising from relative-standing externalities associated with the excessive consumption of such goods. In situations where consumers face a discrete choice between a private and a...

The paper first aims at showing that personal income distribution – at least after government intervention – tends to be a stationary variable for many European countries. This finding backs earlier results achieved by Ramser (1987). Furthermore, personal incomes follow a log-normal...

This paper focuses on how emission tax revenues change relative to GNP, when a fixed environmental standard is implemented by an emission tax and when waste abatement, technical and structural change and capital accumulation is accounted for. One- and two-sector growth models are analyzed...

In this paper the welfare state is considered as insurance device. Redistributive taxation reduces the variance of life- time risk. Behind a veil of ignorance with regard to future position in society, agents decide in a two-parametric expectation/standard deviation-approach about labour supply...

Consider a dynamic model with two countries or coalitions that consume and trade fossil fuel. A non-abating country owns the entire fuel stock and is not concerned about climate change, represented by a ceiling on the carbon dioxide concentration. The government of the other country implements...

In a broader sense the welfare state ex ante can be seen as a social insurance for life-time risks, and ex post as a redistribution mechanism of incomes. Sinn (1995) has developed a normative theory of the welfare state in this view. On a constitutional plain agents determine the amount of...

Scientific expertise suggests that mitigating extreme world-wide climate change damages requires avoiding increases in the world mean temperature exceeding 2° Celsius. To achieve the two degree target, the cumulated global emissions must not exceed some limit, the so-called global carbon...

Internalizing the global negative externality of carbon emissions requires flattening the extraction path of non-renewable fossil-fuel resources (= world carbon emissions). Following Eichner and Pethig (2011b) we set up a two-country two-period model in which one of the countries represents a...

A small open economy operates a carbon emission trading scheme and subsidizes green energy. Taking cap-and-trade as given, we seek to explain the subsidy as the outcome of a trilateral tug of war between the "green" energy industry, the "black" energy industry and consumers. With parametric...