The cross-border mobility of people, goods and services, and capital has expanded enormously both in intensity and diversity over recent decades. States have a general interest in facilitating these flows in order to benefit from economic globalisation. Yet, mainly due to security concerns, most...

We argue that the trend toward international investment agreements (IIAs) with stricter investment rules is driven by competitive diffusion, namely defensive moves of developing countries concerned about foreign direct investment (FDI) diversion in favor of competing host countries. Accounting...

We examine the impact of environmental regulation on the international diffusion of new technology through the patent system. We employ a dataset of automobile emission standards between 1992 and 2007 and corresponding data on cross-border patent inflows of technologies developed to comply with...

This paper investigates the impact of legalized prostitution on human trafficking inflows. According to economic theory, there are two opposing effects of unknown magnitude. The scale effect of legalized prostitution leads to an expansion of the prostitution market, increasing human trafficking,...

This paper analyzes the theoretical and empirical links between inequality in human development on the one hand and sustainability on the other. It specifically looks at causality in both directions. Inequality in various dimensions of human development is analyzed with respect to both weak and...

Economic damage from natural hazards can sometimes be prevented and always mitigated. However, private individuals tend to underinvest in such measures due to problems of collective action, information asymmetry and myopic behavior. Governments, which can in principle correct these market...

A growing number of individuals are choosing to study abroad although, like other manifestations of globalisation, the sources and destinations of these migratory flows are highly uneven. Within the context of on-going debates about the motives for overseas study, the reproduction of class...

The neoclassical approach towards global warming is best represented by the study of Nordhaus (1994). He found that no substantial cuts in greenhosue gas emission are warranted. Most of his critics have focussed on the issue of discounting and have called for a lower discount rate to be used....