This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process...

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...

In June 2013, the High-Level Conference of Middle-Income Countries held in Costa Rica, organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), ventured an intriguing look into the future of development. In particular, the conference highlighted the role of networks in...

This paper analyses the role of ratification quotas in multilateral agreements over emission reduction. The higher is the quota, the lower is the level of emissions in case the agreement comes into force, but the higher is also the risk of failure. In a setting with incomplete information, two...

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a Chinese endeavor to create an international public good (IPG) for bringing a cooperative solution to existing infrastructure deficits, mainly in the Eurasian landmass. This article aims to question the institutional quality of the BRI as a global...

The world of public goods has changed in the last quarter century. Many of the changes have their origins in massively increased human impacts on the biosphere, and in particular on important life support systems such as the carbon cycle, and on resources such as biodiversity, which operate as...

We develop a theoretical framework for equity in council voting games (CVGs). In a CVG, a fully representative voting body delegates decision-making to a subset of the members, as describes, e.g., the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Three equity concepts are proposed: ex-ante...

We study classist societies where the middle class fight over redistribution of public funds with the marginalized and over social policies with the elites. We show that such societies are often deprived of well-defined majoritarian preferences, underscoring the importance of the party system....

This paper revisits the debates about the meaning of economic efficiency, and the moral dilemmas associated with using Kaldor-Hicks efficiency or Pareto efficiency for policy analysis. I lay out the best case for efficiency as meta-value, and highlight that it still does not allow us to evade...