Prices of commodities, including metals, energy and agricultural products, rose markedly over the 2009 - 2010 period. Some observers have attributed a significant part of this increase in commodity prices to the U.S. Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs. Using event-study...

This paper examines whether lax environmental policy and abundant natural resources both attract foreign direct investment (FDI). At first, their potential effects are discussed using arguments from the pollution haven hypothesis and the natural resource curse. Using cross-country Ordinary Least...

Since 2005, the public has lived with high and volatile prices for basic energy and agricultural commodities. The public focus on this unprecedented commodity price volatility has been intense, because a large proportion of the cost of living borne by individuals and families in the U.S. (and...

Food is one of the most primal ways to transmit culture and traditions and thus has vital and even cross-generational importance for us. Nevertheless, many of us have gone beyond relating to food as a primal need. So, in this age of abundance, food is either under-appreciated as epitomized by...

Using a case study approach, this research explores the various potential limiting factors of climate change adaptation, based on the experience of four low-lying islands in central Philippines. In the aftermath of the 2013 7.2-magnitude Bohol earthquake, the islands now become flooded even...

The development of the European social model rests on the concept of social entrepreneurship. The concept has a significant contribution to the development of the European social economy. Social entrepreneurship has a remarkable potential, through its innovative solutions, to play an...

This paper examines the relative merits of two dominant economic instruments for reducing pollution-'green' taxes and tradable permits. Theoretically, the two instruments share many similarities, and on balance, neither seems preferable to the other. In practice, however, most countries have...

In the past three decades, the seed sector has experienced, and is now again experiencing, corporate concentration trends. The fallout of this consolidation is the subject of numerous concerns. However, the seed sector is rather poorly understood. Thus, it is useful to understand it better and...

I will address eight common claims about bitcoin: 1. Physical bitcoins exist; 2. The founder of bitcoin is a person called Satoshi Nakamoto; 3. Bitcoin is mainly used for criminal activity; 4. A lack of security plagues bitcoin; 5. Mining is a waste of energy; 6. Bitcoin too small today to be an...

Payments for environmental services (PES) have become a popular approach to address environmental degradation. However, evidence on its effectiveness is mixed. PES is not a panacea, but there are many cases where PES can be a promising tool. Yet poor PES design translates into poor performance...