What do climate change, global financial crises, pandemics, and fragility and conflict have in common? They are all examples of global risks that can cross geographical and generational boundaries and whose mismanagement can reverse gains in development and jeopardize the well-being of...

What do climate change, global financial crises, pandemics, and fragility and conflict have in common? They are all examples of global risks that can cross geographical and generational boundaries and whose mismanagement can reverse gains in development and jeopardize the well-being of...

Climate change and the increasing demand of water intensify the global water cycle, altering the distribution of water in space and time. This is expected to result in wet areas getting wetter and dry areas getting drier (Pan et al., 2015). As water is key to life, water scarcity is likely to...

This paper investigates the relationship between extreme temperature and online complaints to local government officials. We show that the number of complaints significantly increases by 11.1% on extremely hot days relative to the benchmark temperature. Such effect is most pronounced on the day...

Violent organizations are often providers of many social services in competition with the state. We provide evidence that these organizations use the provision of social services to gain support. This strategy is only effective when it fills the void left by a weak state. We show this by...

This study investigates a free-rider problem in long-term relationships, where, due to its non-excludable nature, each player attempts to seek loopholes to impose the burden of cooperation on other players. The players establish a committee that demands that each player select an action as...

This PDF document was made available as a public service of the RAND Corporation.What is the relationship between terrorism and such potential root causes as poverty, education, religion, and mental health? Is it useful to discuss cause-effect relationships in terms of a rational-choice model?...

In recent years, there has been rapid development of the literature linking climate change and armed conflicts. Although no conclusionary evidence has been found of a direct link between climate change and armed conflicts, still climate change has been addressed as an important trigger,...

Global warming is an example of a global tragedy of the commons. The atmosphere is a global common property resource. The global nature of this resource makes global warming a particularly difficult problem to solve. The reason for this is that there is no world government that can introduce and...

In recent years, agricultural fires intended to clear crop residues account for roughly half as much burned biomass as forest fires. Like other forms of environmental degradation, burned biomass also incurs social costs for society through its contribution to the air pollution. One such cost is...