This survey encompasses multiple areas. The theoretical literature on environmental federalism continues to expand in areas such as capital competition and political economy. On the empirical side, emphasis is put on the existence of strategic interaction among states, the effects of President...

This paper examines the effect of state level corruption on state beer taxes in the United States. Our lobby group model predicts that corruption reduces the beer tax, but this effect is conditional on the level of alcohol-related vehicle deaths. Using a panel of state level data from 1982 to...

We develop and test a theory of the rule of law and environmental policy formation. In our model an increase in the degree of rule of law has two opposing partial effects on environmental policy: first, a greater share of policy decisions are implemented according to law; second, industry...

The literature on trade liberalization and environment has not considered federal structures. This paper shows how the design of environmental policy in a federal system has implications for the effects of trade reform. Trade liberalization leads to a decline in pollution taxes regardless of...

This study establishes a strong association between the country-level female-to-male sex ratio at birth and the time elapsed from a society transitioned to sedentary agricultural activities (the Neolithic Revolution) until 1500AD. This association is robust to the inclusion of various...

This paper studies the effect of former colonies having inherited British common law vs. civil law on the incidence of slum dwelling in developing countries. While common law favors decentralized markets and stronger property rights, civil law yields more government regulation and weaker...

This paper hypothesizes that inherent agricultural land productivity explains contemporary levels of autocracy and democracy. In particular, intermediate levels of productivity are associated with democracy, whereas a legacy of either low or high agricultural productivity is associated with...