I provide a novel dynamic model with private provision of public bads and investments in technologies. The analysis is tractable and the MPE unique. By adding incomplete contracts, I derive implications of and for international climate treaties. While the non-cooperative equilibrium is bad,...

For a club such as the European Union, an important question is when, and under which conditions, a subset of the members should be allowed to form "inner clubs" and enhance cooperation. Flexible cooperation allows members to participate if and only if they benefit, but it generates a freerider...

I investigate when a exible bargaining agenda, where side payments are possible, facilitates cooperation in a context with strategic delegation. On the one hand, allowing side payments may be necessary when one partys participation constraint otherwise would be violated. On the other, with side...

For a club such as the European Union, an important question is whether a subset of the members should be allowed to form "inner clubs" and enhance cooperation. Flexible cooperation allows members to participate if and only if they benefit, but it leads to free-riding when externalities are...

Tradable permits are celebrated as a political instrument since they allow (i) firms to equalize marginal abatement costs through trade and (ii) the government to distribute the burden of the policy in a politically fair and feasible way. These two concerns, however, conflict in a dynamic...

I develop a dynamic model of costly private provision of public goods where agents can also invest in cost-reducing technologies. Despite the n+1 stocks in the model, the analysis is tractable and the (Markov perfect) equilibrium unique. The frame-work is used to derive optimal incomplete...

The paper presents a dynamic game where players contribute to a public bad, invest in technologies, and write incomplete contracts. Despite the n + 1 stocks in the model, the analysis is tractable and the symmetric Markov perfect equilibrium unique. If only the contribution levels are...

Private politics are often introduced by market participants in the absence of public regulation. But when is private politics enough, efficient, or better than administratively costly public regulation? We present a novel framework in which we can study the interaction between regulation,...

This paper explores how a principal with time-inconsistent preferences invests optimally in technology or capital. If the current principal prefers her future self to save more, she can increase current investments complementary to future savings and decrease investments in the strategic...

Bård Harstad received the 2013 Erik Kempe Award for his novel and insightful contribution to the study of international environmental policy in his paper “Buy Coal! A Case for Supply-Side Environmental Policy". In a short video, he explains to Re3 the logics behind his theory, and possibly...