I offer an approach linking a welfare criterion to the “sustainable development opportunities” of the economy. This implies a dependence of a criterion on the information about the current state. I consider the problem for the Dasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz model with externalities. The...

The question of formulation of a social planner criterion for an imperfect economy is examined using an example of a polluting economy negatively affected by growing temperature. Imperfection of the economy is expressed here in deviations from the optimal initial state. It is shown that a...

This thesis was written by Christian Beermann while he was a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the University of Munich. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in May 2015. The...

Using a dynamic framework with strategic interactions, we study the management of a non-renewable natural resource when property rights are generally weak. Under generally weak property rights both the resource stock and the revenues from exploiting it are imperfectly protected, due to...

Using a dynamic framework with strategic interactions, we study the management of a non-renewable natural resource when property rights are generally weak. Under generally weak property rights both the resource stock and the revenues from exploiting it are imperfectly protected, due to...

This paper empirically analyzes the influence of rents from natural resources on the composition of government spending and investigates whether the relationship differs between democracies and autocracies. Both panel data and instrumental variable regressions suggest that there is a negative...

This thesis was written by Christian Beermann while he was a research assistant at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the University of Munich. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in May 2015. The...

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the effect of natural resource rents on the process of economic liberalization and a potential moderating effect of the level of democracy. A simple political-economic model is developed in which the government in an autocratic country faces...

Both large and medium-sized mines in southern Africa are contributing less to the economy owing to rising production costs and poor demand for minerals. Politicians argue that small mines can make an important contribution. But this analysis shows that small mines face real contraints and that...

For a country fractionalized in competing factions, each owning part of the stock of natural exhaustible resources, or with insecure property rights, we analyze how resources are transformed into productive capital to sustain consumption. We allow property rights to improve as the country...