This paper examines the choice between government expenditure on public goods and transfer payments, in the form of a pension, in an overlapping-generations model. Government expenditure is tax-financed on a pay-as-you-go basis. A utilitarian judge chooses expenditures to maximize a social...

Almost everyone can agree that the original connection of intellectual property to trade was for purely economically instrumental purposes but few would have predicted its other consequences, particularly the reshaped relationship of intellectual property’s innovation mandate to the production...

In their majority, public international lawyers postulate that for a new rule of customary law to originate, two conditions must be fulfilled: there must be consistent practice, and it must be shown that this practice is motivated by the belief that such behaviour is required in law. Maurice...

Standard political economy models of redistribution, notably that of Meltzer and Richard (1981), fail to account for the remarkable variance in government redistribution across democracies. We develop a general model of redistribution that explains why some democratic governments are more prone...

This paper argues that a uniform global tax-like price on carbon emissions, whose revenues each country retains, can provide a focal point for a reciprocal common climate commitment, whereas quantity targets, which do not nearly so readily present such a single focal point, tend to rely...

International carbon markets are frequently propagated as an efficient instrument for reducing CO2 emissions. We argue that such markets, despite their desirable efficiency properties, might not be in the best interest of governments who are guided by strategic considerations in negotiations. We...

International carbon markets are frequently propagated as an efficient instrument for reducing CO2 emissions. We argue that such markets, despite their desirable efficiency properties, might not be in the best interest of governments who are guided by strategic considerations in negotiations. We...

A country's urban silhouettes prophesy its future climate policy, or so this paper argues. The more its city silhouettes are skewed to the periphery, the more likely a country is to implement the carbon tax. This is why the effect of a country's urban form on greenhouse gas emissions -- a bone...