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 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...

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...

There is an ongoing discussion especially among political scientists and economists whether and how climate variability affects civil conflicts and wars in developing countries. Given the predicted climatic changes, several studies argue that increasing temperatures or decreasing precipitation...

There is an ongoing discussion especially among political scientists and economists whether and how climate variability affects civil conflicts and wars in developing countries. Given the predicted climatic changes, several studies argue that increasing temperatures or decreasing precipitation...

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...

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...