How much further will the global population expand, can all these extra mouths be fed, and what is the role in this story of economic growth? We study the interactions between global population, technological progress, per-capita income, demand for food and agricultural land expansion from 1960...

Modern agriculture relies on a small number of highly productive crops and the continued expansion of agricultural land area has led to a significant loss of biodiversity. In this paper we consider the macroeconomic consequences of a continued expansion of modern agriculture from the perspective...

This paper looks at the problem of information control behind the unsustainable levels of air pollution in China. In particular, it focuses on a large urban area, Beijing, and it examines the role of the public, government-controlled information and the adaptation choices of households in...

This paper examines with a case study of Beijing, China, the health benefits that could be reaped from urban air quality improvements. The study implements a household survey to collect information about the yearly medical expenditures and lost days of work, to estimates the total costs of...

In this subtask we survey the literature that estimates the ancillary benefits of greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement in developing countries, and the extent to which its findings can be transferred across countries. Specifically, we focus upon the health benefits from emission reduction in...

We examine the effect of the introduction of uniform water-charging for aquifer management and provide evidence using a survey-based choice experiment of agricultural water users in rural Tunisia. Theoretically, we show that the implementation of the proposed second-best regulation would result...

We distinguish between local problems of biodiversity loss and global ones, where international cooperation is required. Global biodiversity regulation involves choosing the optimal stopping rule regarding global land conversions, in order to ensure that some areas of unconverted natural...

We examine the link between international aid, political instability and economic growth in autocratic countries. First, we discuss the manner in which externally provided liquidity can affect looting and instability in an autocratic country, through the generation of outside options for a...

An important issue in the life sciences industries concerns the nature of the incentive mechanism that should govern the production of innovation within this R&D sector. We look at the specic problem of coordinating the supply of inputs across very different agents-North and South-that must each...

The economic growth literature is surveyed in regard to the question of sustainability and innovation. It is argued that the state is able to elect the technologies on which its economy is based, and that these technologies (and the capital in which they are embedded) are the fundamental...