Who blames corruption for the poor enforcement of environmental laws? The answer to this question is important since corruption is an important reason why environmental policies are not properly enforced, but previous studies of environmental public opinion do not address the issue. We analyze...

How do individual agents enact the institutions that govern collective behavior in a social situation? How do individuals come to share self-enforcing expectations about collective behavior, so that societal rules and constraints have an effect on individual choice? Conventional accounts, such...

The surge of local climate policy is a puzzling political-economic phenomenon. Why have local policy-makers, incapable of mitigating global warming through individual emissions reductions, adopted ambitious policies while national governments refrain from action? I construct a game-theoretic...

In democratic societies, citizens can hold their government politically accountable for the consequences of international cooperation. Can democratic accountability shape international cooperation under strategic interdependence, and if so, to what effect? I show formally that citizens can endow...

Powerful states often accept unanimity voting on accession to international institutions, even though this enables weak states to blackmail powerful states into providing costly side payments. Whereas the literature attributes this choice mainly to efforts to bolster the legitimacy of...

Why are some countries developing many energy efficiency innovations, while others are lagging behind? I argue that export orientation and electricity at low variable cost from nuclear and hydropower plants have an interactive effect on energy efficiency innovation. Export-oriented countries...

Gradualism is common in international cooperation, as states begin with limited cooperation and choose more ambitious targets slowly over time. However, most models of international cooperation are static and thus cannot explain gradualism. I show that when states can implement domestic reforms...