The dominant explanation of public attitudes vis-à-vis economic globalisation focuses on re-distributional implications, with an emphasis on factor endowments and government-sponsored safety nets (the compensation hypothesis). The empirical implication of these theoretical arguments is that in...

Field trials with GM crops are not only plant science experiments. They are also social experiments concerning the implications of government imposed regulatory constraints and public opposition for scientific activity. We assess these implications by estimating additional costs due to...

Existing empirical models of international co-operation emphasize domestic determinants, although virtually all theories of international relations focus on interdependencies between countries. This article examines how much states' linkages with the international system, relative to domestic...

Many of the world's large international river basins, which are the principal sources of freshwater for billions of people and nature, are likely to experience increasing stress over the coming decades. In many cases this stress will be due to changes both on the water supply (because of...

This letter reviews the scientific literature on whether and how environmental changes affect the risk of violent conflict. The available evidence from qualitative case studies indicates that environmental stress can contribute to violent conflict in some specific cases. Results from...

This article reviews the existing theoretical arguments and empirical findings linking renewable and non-renewable natural resources to the onset, intensity, and duration of intrastate as well as interstate armed conflict. Renewable resources are supposedly connected to conflict via scarcity,...

Non-governmental organizations play an increasingly important role in the formation and implementation of environmental policies and institutions. The growing involvement of non-state actors in environmental governance is generally welcomed for two reasons: civil society presumably helps...

Theories explaining government size and its consequences are of two varieties. The first portrays government as a provider of public goods and a corrector of externalities. The second associates larger governments with bureaucratic inefficiency and special-interest-group influence. What...

Many political leaders of the Global South oppose linkages between trade liberalization and environmental protection. We field-tested a combination of surveys and conjoint experiments in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Vietnam to examine whether citizens in developing countries share this position....

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) constitute the most rapidly growing form of trade liberalization in the global economy. In contrast to, for example, the World Trade Organization, PTAs allow for discrimination among potential partner countries. This helps explain their proliferation. But it...