In the absence of a broad international agreement, national climate policiesare less efficient, due to carbon leakage, and more costly, due to causingunemployment and a loss of competitiveness on international markets. As,in many countries, a substantial fraction of emissions results from the...

In this paper we take a public choice perspective on strategic environmental policy and international environmental agreements. We examine cooperative and noncooperative environmental policies under governments that are either welfare maximizers ("good dictators") or tax revenue maximizers...

Empirical investigation by dynamic panel data models of the determinants of democracy shows a strong positive neighbor effect. Foreign aid is stabilizing but not inducing democratic development, while there is no significant relationship to openness to trade and income.

A carbon tax is an efficient economic instrument to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel burning. If designed properly, it could also help significantly to promote renewable energy. Using a multi-sector, multi-country computable general equilibrium model this study...

It is well-known that price- and quantity-based regulation approaches provide different investment incentives. But usually, only the effect on the level of investment is studied. In this paper, we show that under uncertainty, they also lead to the adoption of different technologies due to the...

Inducing technological progress is an important objective of environmental regulation. We investigate under which conditions regulation-induced technological progress pursues the best technological option. We analyze a setting with vertical and horizontal technological progress, cost...

Under uncertainty, the optimal choice between price and quantity instruments depends on the technology of the regulated firms, which is often private information. We consider an environmental policy that delegates the prices-versus-quantities decision to the firms by offering them the choice...