This paper develops a theory where access to food and fuel energy is critical to the location, number, and size of human settlements. By combining our theory with a simple Malthusian mechanism, we generate predictions for the distribution of economic activity and population across geographic...

Solar geoengineering (SGE) can combat climate change by directly reducing temperatures. Both SGE and the climate itself are surrounded by great uncertainties. Implementing SGE affects learning about these uncertainties. We model endogenous learning over two uncertainties: the sensitivity of...

This paper generalizes the original Brander and Taylor model of open-access renewable resource use and trade to address three common critiques. First, I introduce heterogeneity across agents in harvesting productivity to smooth out the model's extreme specialization patterns while maintaining...

Orcinus Orca is the world's largest predator, and simultaneously a significant tourist asset and cultural icon for much of the Pacific Northwest. In the past two decades, the Southern Resident Killer whales (SRKW) have declined by more than 25 percent, and this population appears on a...

How should international economic policy address climate change? Does trade cause deforestation and endangered species depletion? How does globalization affect air and water pollution? Do trade and investment create a race to the bottom in environmental policy? How important are environmental...

Human beings' domination of the planet has not been kind to many species worldwide. This is to be expected. Humans have radically altered natural landscapes, harvested heavily from the ocean, and altered the climate in an unprecedented way. Recent concerns over the extent and rate of...

Orcinus Orca is the world's largest predator, and simultaneously a significant tourist asset and cultural icon for much of the Pacific Northwest. In the past two decades, the Southern Resident Killer whale (SRKW) population has declined by more than 25 percent, putting them at risk of...

Considerable progress has been made in our understanding of the relationship between international trade and the environment since Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger published their now seminal working paper examining the potential environmental effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement in...

We develop a spatial model of energy exploitation where energy sources are differentiated by their geographic location and energy density. The spatial setting creates a scaling law that magnifies the importance of differences across energy sources. As a result, renewable sources twice as dense,...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of power density [Watts/m²] into economics. By introducing an explicit spatial structure into a simple general equilibrium model we are able to show how the power density of available energy resources determines the extent of energy...