Despite of the apparent failure of the Kyoto Protocol with respect to environmental effectiveness, it has established a broad international mechanism that might be able to provide a global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions during a second commitment period. In this paper we investigate the...

Renewable resources can provide society with (i) resource rent, (ii) consumer surplus and (iii) worker surplus in resource harvesting. In a dynamic analysis we show that privatization increases the present values of consumer surplus and worker surplus if harvesting costs do not depend on the...

Hunger affects 800 million people, 11% of humankind. However, it is diminishing in absolute numbers and as a percentage of population as a result of slower population growth, economic development, and increasing farm productivity. Current food output is more than enough to feed all humankind and...

Given disparate beliefs about economic growth, technical change and damage caused by climate change, this paper starts with the seeming impossibility of determining a unique time profile of the social costs of carbon as a benchmark for climate negotiations and for infrastructure decisions that...

Despite ambitious climate goals and already substantial stocks of developed fossil energy reserves, development of new fossil energy reserves continues to be high. This raises concerns, as it reinforces the fossil industry’s opportunities and incentives to continue extraction, and may...

The prior appropriation doctrine provides for the allocation of most surface water rights in the Western United States. It is rightly praised for overcoming the uncertainty that plagued the riparian doctrine, which historically dominated water allocation law in the Eastern and Midwestern United...

Many new and ambitious energy efficiency and conservation laws are being enacted at all levels of government - and with greater financial incentives than provided previously. These innovations are intended to overcome or minimize market barriers such as principal-agent problems, information and...

We examine the conceptual and empirical basis of the environmental Kuznets curve. From both perspectives, the relationship lacks firm foundations. In particular, the empirical relationship is shown to be highly sensitive to the choice of pollutant, sample of countries and time period. This...

Climate change is the biggest threat humankind is facing nowadays. More greenhouse gases (GHG) have been released into the atmosphere in the last 30 years than in the entire history of our planet, causing average temperatures to rise by about one degree Celsius thus far. If this continues, 50...