To mitigate climate change, states must make significant investments into energy and other sectors. To solve this problem, scholars emphasize the importance of leveraging private capital. If states create institutional mechanisms that promote private investment, they can reduce the fiscal cost...

While neoliberal institutionalists argue that treaties facilitate collective action, many North-South regulatory treaties focus on largely national problems in developing countries. As such, these treaties present a puzzle: why a global treaty to address national regulatory problems? We argue...

Previous research has shown that international trade exposure promotes the diffusion of voluntary environmental standards, such as ISO 14001, from importing nations to exporting nations. However, previous studies have not theorized about the conditions under which trade diffusion is most...

States often create international institutions that impose legally binding rules on member states, and then do not even attempt to enforce these rules. Why? In this article, we present a game-theoretic model of moribund hard law in international institutions. We show that if some states face...

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...

A common argument for the lack of economic reform in developing countries is popular opposition. If current economic policies are dysfunctional, could information about alternatives sway the voters? We examine if a simple argument emphasizing the need to increase electricity prices for improved...

We examine the relationship between socio-economic factors and public opinion on environmental policies in Brazil, drawing on a survey conducted in June 2012. There are few systematic studies of the determinants of environmental preferences in emerging economies, and Brazil is a particularly...

Unreliable electricity supply is a major obstacle to economic development in countries such as India. While electricity problems in the rural areas are widely recognized, scholars have yet to analyze the situation in urban slums. Drawing on 2004–2005 survey data from the India Human...

New technology is fundamental to sustainable development. However, inventors from industrialized countries often refuse technology transfer because they worry about reverse-engineering. When can clean technology transfer succeed? We develop a formal model of the political economy of...