Prior research on 'strategic voting' has reached the conclusion that unanimity rule is uniquely bad: it results in destruction of information, and hence makes voters worse off. We show that this conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the issue being voted on is exogenous, i.e.,...

We estimate the degree of 'stickiness' in aggregate consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption habits) for thirteen advanced economies. We find that, after controlling for measurement error, consumption growth has a high degree of autocorrelation, with a stickiness...

We examine the determinants of firm's current environmental expenditure and firm's capital investment in equipment for pollution control using a Heckman selection model. As regards current environmental expenditure, we find that larger, exporting firms and firms subject to the Integrated...

We apply four alternative decision criteria, two old ones and two new, to the question of the appropriate level of greenhouse gas emission reduction. In all cases, we consider a uniform carbon tax that is applied to all emissions from all sectors and all countries; and that increases over time...

This paper investigates the economic incentives of countries to cooperate on international adaptation financing. Adaptation is generally implicitly incorporated in the climate change damage functions as used in Integrated Assessment Models. We replace the implicit decision on adaptation with...

Multi-gas approaches to climate change policies require a metric establishing equivalences among emissions of various species. Climate scientists and economists have proposed four classes of such metrics and debated their relative merits. We present a unifying framework that clarifies the...

We model individual careers in sports and games from initial entry to eventual exit or success as a discrete-choice, finite-horizon optimization problem. We apply this model to the international game of chess and study cross-country differences in the relative success of players. While we find...

Qualitative surveys enjoy huge popularity among business cycle analysts and research institutes since they provide fast information on the stance of the economy. However, in order to derive quantitative statements researchers have to rely on assumptions about the relation between quantitative...