We empirically analyze the formation of international environmental agreements within a political economy framework. We develop a theoretical model of state dependent net benefits of ratification predicting (i) strategic behavior with respect to the timing of ratification and (ii) that...

We study the effectiveness of emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol with respect to reducing CO₂ emissions. Using country-level and US state-level panel data and employing the synthetic control method, we find very little evidence for an emission reduction effect for the major emitters among...

We empirically analyze the formation of international environmental agreements within a political economy framework. We develop a theoretical model of state dependent net benefits of ratification that predicts strategic behavior with respect to the timing of ratification and allows us to relate...

Illegal waste disposal is one of the most important environmental problems worldwide. An increasing number of countries apply criminal sanctioning to environmental offenders, based on the notion, but without any evidence that such sanctions provide deterrence. The present paper studies the...

The author analyzes the optimal investment in environmental protection in a model of an infinite series of non-overlapping hyperbolically discounting agents. He shows that without a commitment mechanism society is eventually stuck in a situation where all agents prefer further investment in the...

In this paper, we extend the well known result that hyperbolically discounting agents tend to postpone costs into the future. In a simple model we show that, without commitment to the ex ante optimal plan, no investment in environmental protection is undertaken over the whole time horizon, no...

The author analyzes the optimal investment in environmental protection in a model of non-overlapping hyperbolically discounting agents. He shows that, in the long run and in the absence of a commitment device, society is stuck in a situation where all agents prefer further investments, yet no...

In this paper we investigate the reasons why integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) fail to achieve their conservation goals. We develop a bio-economic model of open access land and wildlife exploitation, which is consistent with many farming and hunting societies living in...

We study the optimal control of a pollutant that accumulates with a delay.We find that optimal paths are, in general, non-monotonic and oscillatory, but monotonic if the objective function is additively separable. Hence, using additively separable objective functions as an approximation to a...

In this paper I study the optimal control path for a (capital or pollution) stock which accumulates time with a lag to its control. It is shown that the optimal control path is non-monotonic and cyclical in general, but it is monotonic if the objective function is additively separable in the...