Given the difficulty of monitoring, and even more so of enforcing, International Environmental Agreements, it is surprising that they are signed and implemented. This paper offers a theoretical model, which addresses this issue. The focus is on informational and coordination problems. A country...

We investigate the influence of a judge’s objective function on the type of sanctions used for enforcing environmental standards. We focus on the difference between monetary and non-monetary penalties. Therefore, we examine the extent to which judges take social costs of sanctions into account...

This paper examines future energy and emissions scenarios in China generated by the Integrated Assessment Model WITCH. A Business-as-Usual scenario is compared with five scenarios in which Greenhouse Gases emissions are taxed, at different levels. The elasticity of China’s emissions is...

This paper studies fiscal federalism when regions differ in voters’ ability to monitor public officials. We develop a model of political agency in which rent-seeking politicians provide public goods to win support from heterogeneously informed voters. In equilibrium, voter information...

In this paper, we explore automobile fuel efficiency policies in the presence of two externalities i) a global environmental problem and ii) international innovation spillovers. Using a simple model with two regions, we show that both a fuel tax and a tax on vehicles based on their fuel economy...