We present a model of altruistically-minded-yet rational-players contributing to a public good. A key feature is the tension between altruism and "crowding-out" effects (players' efforts are strategic substitutes). We find that more altruistic behaviour can raise or reduce welfare, depending on...

Gas prices around the world va’y widely despite being connected by international trade of LNG Some industry observers argue hat major exporters g , Qatar) have acted irrationally by failing to engage in price arbitrage. This is also difficult to reconcile with a perfectly competitive model in...

In November 2014, OPEC announced a new strategy geared towards improving its market share. Oil-market analysts interpreted this as an attempt to squeeze higher-cost producers including US shale oil out of the market. Over the next year, crude oil prices crashed, with large repercussions for the...

We present a model of altruistically-minded-yet rational-players contributing to a public good. A key feature is the tension between altruism and "crowding-out" effects (players' efforts are strategic substitutes). We find that more altruistic behaviour can raise or reduce welfare, depending on...

We evaluate a recent U.S. initiative to include the social cost of carbon (SCC) in regulatory decisions. To our knowledge, this paper provides the first systematic test of the extent to which applying the SCC has affected national policy. We examine all economically significant federal...

In October 2010, a group of leading thinkers on environmental policy met at the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester for a conference in honour of Nobel Laureate Tom Schelling. This column presents a 10-point guideline for climate change policy co-authored by 26...

This paper examines the amount of grandfathering needed for an emissions trading scheme (ETS) to have a neutral impact on firm profits. We provide a simple formula to calculate profit-neutral grandfathering in a Cournot model with firms of different sizes and a general demand function. Using...