Why do armed groups sometimes coerce and sometimes not? Civilian suffering due to coercion in conflicts is larger; yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that armed groups often choose not to coerce. To explain the observed variation in coercive practices, I combine a two-sector specific-factos trade...

Natural resource abundance is a blessing for some countries, but a curse for othes. We show that differences across countries in the degree of fiscal decentralisation can contribute to this divergent outcome. First, the paper presents a unified theory that combines political and market...

The paper proves the existence of equilibrium in nonrenewable resource markets when extraction costs are non-convex and resource storage is possible.Inventories atten the consumption path and eliminate price jumps at the end of the extraction period. Market equilibrium becomes then...

What is the optimal instrument design and choice for a regulator attempting to control emissions by private agents in face of uncertainty arising from business cycles? In applying Weitzman's result [Prices vs. quantities, Review of Economic Studies, 41 (1974), 477-491] to the problem of...

This paper studies how monetary policy should optimally respond to an oil discovery.Oil discoveries provide news that the natural level of output will increase in the future. Anticipated increases in natural output lower the natural real interest rate. Optimal monetary policy must accommodate...

The optimal reaction to a productivity shock which becomes more imminent with global warming is to price carbon (proportional to the marginal hazard of a catastrophe) to curb the risk of climate change, but also to accumulate precautionary capital to facilitate smoothing of consumption and curb...

A rapidly rising carbon tax leads to faster extraction of fossil fuels and accelerates global warming. We analyze how general equilibrium effects operating through the international capital market affect this Green Paradox. In a two-region, two-period world with identical homothetic preferences...

This paper examines the impact of the oil price boom in the 1970s and the subsequent bust on non-oil economic activity in oil-dependent countries. During the boom, manufacturing exports and value added increased significantly relative to non-oil dependent countries,along with wages, employment,...

This article examines the possible adverse effects of well-intended climate policies. A weak Green Paradox arises if the announcement of a future carbon tax or a sufficiently fast rising carbon tax encourages fossil fuel owners to extract reserves more aggressively, thus exacerbating global...

This paper investigates the optimal scal policy adjustment to adverse terms of trade shocks by commodity-producing countries within a general equilibrium model,which allows for explicit distinction between public investment and government consumption. As the private sector has limited room for...