The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties drastically reduce the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. The reason is not only the reduced emission abatement in the US, but also the...

Strategies of international risk management, as the implementation of tradable emission permits, feed back to the incentive structure of a treaty, like the Kyoto Protocol. Discussing the Kyoto Protocol the question was: Should there be any restrictions on the trading of emission permits or not?...

The housing market is one of the most important markets in any economy, constituting typically both the most important class of consumption good and the most widely held investment asset. The origin of the Great Recession in the U.S. housing market has shown the importance of linkages between...

Kommunale Wirtschaftstätigkeit ist wieder im Aufschwung. Nach einer Phase, in der staatliche Beteiligungen an Wirtschaftsunternehmen abgebaut wurden und die Kommunen als staatliche Ebene mit der breitesten ökonomischen Betätigung viele Aufgaben an die Privatwirtschaft - oft an...

Value of Statistical Life (VSL) studies suggest that people's willingness to pay for statistical lives is consistent with their willingness to pay for identified lives. The idea that the valuations are different may be no more than an artifact of the economic method for valuing statistical...

Despite spending far more on medical care, Americans live shorter lives than the citizens of other high-income countries. The situation has been getting worse for at least three decades. This paper describes the main scientific methods for guiding the allocation of resources to health -...

Seit Anfang dieses Jahres wird in Deutschland der neue Rundfunkbeitrag erhoben. Im Unterschied zur vorher geltenden Rundfunkgebühr bemisst sich die Höhe der neuen Rundfunkabgabe nicht mehr nach der Zahl der vorgehaltenen Rundfunkgeräte. Sie richtet sich vielmehr an den Haushalten bzw....

When abatement costs are uncertain, but correlated, and a country becomes pri-vately informed that costs are low, then unilateral actions serve as a signalling devise to reveal low costs and unilateral actions have the potential to trigger positive responses abroad. However, the country engaging...

Based on the political support function model by Hillman (1982), we consider the choice of policy instruments in environmental regulation. More specifically, we extend the Hillman model so that it can incorporate the connection between the relative strength of lobby groups, the chosen level of...

Why did the climate negotiations in The Hague fail? Our contribution is to argue that the conflict between the European Union and the United States stems mainly from disagreement on the cost issue. We argue that three main concerns promoted by the European Union in The Hague, i.e. a 50% national...