This article examines the future of our petroleum-based economy in light of the voluminous debates over Peak Oil and includes the perspectives of the Western multinational oil companies themselves. The article surveys the Peak Oil discussions and the media campaigns of the major oil companies...

The story of mining is the story of civilization. From the development of metal currency and rudimentary tools through the extraction of fossil fuels and rare earth minerals necessary for renewable energy technology, mining is fundamental to human advancement. American civilization is no...

This article is among the first to integrate current climate change science, particularly ongoing impacts and predicted impacts, with a detailed roadmap for substantial reform of our environmental processes for reviewing proposed renewable energy projects. Most existing articles either focus...

Liquorice root has been dug up and traded for centuries in a Euro-Asiatic belt stretching from the Iberic Peninsula to Eastern China. In this area it was possible to distinguish three different cultural traditions and markets: the Mediterranean and Middle East one, the Indian and the Chinese,...

Taking Cadiz as a case study, this article analyses the changes that took place in the provisioning areas of the Spanish periphery in the second half of the Eighteenth Century and the beginnings of the Nineteenth Century and poses that public regulation of wheat and flour markets through...

The objective of this study is to determine the causes of the loss of share of agricultural products and food in international trade. The article compares, using a gravity model, the impact of various factors upon bilateral trade in agricultural products, in manufactures and in total trade,...

The objective of the present study is to explain the fundamental changes experienced by agricultural trade in the second half of the XX century. The first of these was a progressive concentration of this trade among developed countries, while the second was a significant boom in agricultural...

We investigate the costs of transportation regulation using the example of agricultural markets in the United States. Using a large database of prices by state of agricultural commodities, we find that dispersion fell for many commodities until the First World War. We demonstrate that this...

International investment agreements define commitments on investment protection, but also shed light on how these commitments are to be integrated with other public policy objectives. Investment protection in the context of environmental regulation has been a frequent source of controversy and...

The main objective of this work is to analyze the measures implemented during the Franco dictatorship over the period 1939㈀1959 to revive the exports of cork products, which had fallen sharply since the beginning of the crisis of 1929. The first measure, implemented in 1939 and 1940, was...