The paper analyses the welfare effects of immigration when some sectors of the economy are characterized by wage bargaining between unions and employers. We show that immigration is unambiguously beneficial if the wage elasticity of labor demand in the competitive sectors is smaller than in the...

When politicians negotiate in international climate conventions they may suffer from incomplete information about each other's preferences about reaching an agreement. As is known, this may cause failure to reach an efficient cooperative agreement. We study the role of the clean development...

We analyze bargaining over international climate agreements in a setting with incomplete information about abatement costs. Unilateral commitment to high abatement reduces the gains from global cooperation. This reduces the probability of reaching efficient international environmental agreements

This paper assesses the role of the public sector in adaptation to climate change. We first offer a definition and categorisation of climate change adaptation. We then consider the primary economic principles that can guide the assignment of adaptation tasks to either the private or the public...

This paper assesses the role of the public sector in adaptation to climate change. We first offer a definition and categorization of climate change adaptation. We then consider the primary economic principles that can guide the assignment of adaptation tasks to either the private or the public...

The birth of children often shifts the power balance within a family. If family decisions are made according to the spouses' welfare function, this shift in power may lead to a time consistency problem. The allocation of resources after the birth of children may differ from the ex-ante optimal...

We study how the shadow economy affects pollution and how this effect depends on corruption levels in public administration. Production in the shadow economy allows firms to avoid environmental regulation policies; a large informal sector may be accompanied by higher pollution levels. Our...

Many decisions in politics and business are made by teams rather than by single individuals. In contrast, economic models typically assume an individual rational decision maker. A rapidly growing body of (experimental) literature investigates team decisions in different settings. We study team...

We show that a minimum wage introduced in the presence of asymmetric information about worker productivities will lead to lower unemployment levels than predicted by the standard labour market model with heterogeneous labour and symmetric information