Why do Scandinavian countries perform better in terms of environmental protection than other European Union countries? In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that societies characterised by low-income inequality (such as the Nordic European countries) generate political-economic equilibria...

This paper provides an overview of the latest developments in methodologies for assessing the vulnerability of coastal zones to climate change at regional and local scales. The focus of vulnerability assessment in coastal zones used to be on erosion and land loss due to sea-level rise....

Much of the world's gene pool is located in tropical rainforests, which are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Proper management of protected forests is crucial to avoid further loss of forest resources and biodiversity. Resource extraction by local communities has been cited as a major...

Leniency programmes reduce sanctions for law violators that self-report. We focus on their ability to deter cartels and organised crime in general by increasing incentives to "cheat" on partners. Moderate leniency programmes that reduce/cancel sanctions for the reporting party cannot affect...

In this paper we use a simple climate model with endogenous environmental technical change in order to analyse the effects on equity and efficiency of different degrees of restrictions on trade in the market for pollution permits. The model is obtained by incorporating in Nordhaus and Yang...

This paper develops a spatial model for a water basin that allows for surface water allocation and re-use of the water that is lost. The analytical solution suggests specialisation of production over space - upstream farmers use canal water and downstream farmers pump groundwater that is lost...

We explore the effects of environmental taxes that imprecisely target pollution. A review of actual policies indicates few (if any) examples of a true tax on pollution. More typically, environmental taxes target an input or output that is correlated with pollution. We construct a simple...

This paper addresses the question of delegation in an organisation where there is an initial asymmetry of information between the principal and the agent. We assume that the principal cannot use revelation techniques à la Baron Myerson to elicit agent's superior information and in contrast, we...

Spontaneous adoption of cleaner technologies can be slowed down by various sources of inertia. Investment irreversibility, uncertainty about the actual private benefits, and the expectation of declining adoption costs due to the diffusion of environmental innovation, may involve a timing of...