We investigate whether global cooperation for emission abatement can be improved if asymmetric countries can sign different parallel environmental agreements. The analysis assumes a two-stage game theoretical model. Conditions for self-enforcing sets of agreements and the resulting total...

Biodiversity is an essential resource, which we classify as conditionally-renewable. In order to achieve conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity virtually all nation states signed the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. In this paper we investigate how the heterogeneity...

We study the impact of altruism on the stability of international climate agreements. We consider the standard two-stage game for the analysis of international environmental agreements where countries announce their participation at the first stage and abatement levels are chosen at the second...

The concepts of food deficit, hunger, undernourishment and food security are discussed. Axioms and indices for the assessment of nutrition of individuals and groups are suggested. Furthermore a measure for food aid donor performance is developed and applied to a sample of bilateral and...

Of Rawls's two principles of justice only the second has received attention from economists. The second principle is concerned with the social and economic conditions in a just society. The first principle, however, has largely been neglected. It claims, that all people in society should have...

The paper is an enquiry into dynamic social contract theory. The social contract defines the rules of resource use. An intergenerational social contract in an economy with a single exhaustible resource is examined within a framework of an overlapping generations model. It is assumed that new...

In modern political philosophy social contract theory is the most prominent approach to individual rights and fair institutions. According to social contract theory the system of rights in a society ought to be justified by reconstructing its basic features as a contract between the mutually...

The value concept of traditional resource economics is welfare. Therefore, sustainability of welfare is often taken to characterise our obligations to future generations. This paper argues that this view is inappropriate because it leaves no room for future generations autonomy. Future...

This paper studies the impact of pragmatic and optimal transfer schemes on the incentives for regions to join international climate agreements. With an applied model that comprises twelve world regions we investigate: (i) a benchmark without transfers, (ii) scenarios with allocation-based rules...