We develop a continuous time dynamic game to provide with a benchmark theory of Arab Spring-type events. We consider a resource-dependent economy with two interacting groups, the elite vs. the citizens, and two political regimes, dictatorship vs. a freer regime. Transition to the freer regime...

This paper extends the classical exhaustible-resource/stock-pollution model with the irreversibility of pollution decay. Within this framework, we answer the question how the potential irreversibility of pollution affects the extraction path. We investigate the conditions under which the economy...

This study proposes a new mechanism for the resource curse: crowding-out of innovation due to the existence of an option to engage in conflict. Using a game theoretical framework, it is argued that an increase in the amount of natural resources (in the informal sector where conflict for a...

This paper examines whether lax environmental policy and abundant natural resources both attract foreign direct investment (FDI). At first, their potential effects are discussed using arguments from the pollution haven hypothesis and the natural resource curse. Using cross-country Ordinary Least...

We develop an overlapping generations model where consumption is the source of polluting emissions. Pollution stock accumulates with emissions but is partially assimilated by nature at each period. The assimilation capacity of nature is limited and vanishes beyond a critical level of pollution....

The design of environmental policy typically takes place within a framework in which uncertainty over the future impact of pollution and two different kinds of irreversibilities interact. The first kind of irreversibility concerns the sunk cost of environmental degradation; the second is related...

We consider an optimal consumption and pollution problem that has two important features. Environmental damages due to economic activities may be irreversible and the level at which the degradation becomes irreversible is unknown. Particular attention is paid to the situation where agents are...

The paper reexamines Lipset’s theory of democratization, by distinguishing the role of (economic) development from that of education, inequality, and (natural) resources. We highlight two contrasting effects of education and human capital accumulation. On the one side, education prompts...

This paper focuses both on the competition process and the firms liability in environmental protection and the demonstration is made by comparing two models of safety investment. The rst one shows sensitive players to their environmental liability: they seek to minimize the technologies accident...

The paper introduces the concept of a firm's normal employment level as a weighted average of past employment levels and it analyzes the impact of an incentive scheme in which a firm receives a reward (or pays a penalty) when it deviates above (below) its normal employment level. The result is...