Adaptation to climate change is becoming increasingly important in the political and scientific debate. The reason for this is that climate change impacts are visible already today and will intensify in the next decades. Furthermore, the prospects for an effective international agreement on...

Given the ubiquitous scarcity of resources an economic approach is necessary in order to determine an optimal strategy of adaptation to climate change. In this paper we develop an economic framework for the study of adaptation which allows us to distinguish between decentralized adaptation by...

Opponents of the voluntary labeling scheme for genetically modified (GM) food products often argue that consumers have the right to knowʺ and therefore advocate mandatory labeling. In this paper we argue against this line of reasoning. Using experimental auctions conducted with a sample of the...

Opponents of the voluntary labeling scheme for genetically modified (GM) food products often argue that consumers have the right to know and therefore advocate mandatory labeling. In this paper we argue against this line of reasoning. Using experimental auctions conducted with a sample of the...

This paper studies the voluntary provision of public goods that is partially driven by a desire to offset for individual polluting activities. We first extend existing theory and show that offsets allow a reduction in effective environmental pollution levels while not necessarily extending the...

Based on unique data from a world-wide survey of agents involved in international climate policy, this paper empirically analyzes the importance of equity in this field. We find that equity issues are considered highly important in international climate negotiations and that the polluter-pays...

In this paper we study political-economy determinants of the differentiation of environmental taxes between sectors. Using a common-agency model, we provide predictions on tax differentiation which are then tested using data from the German Ecological Tax Reform. As the reform is revenue neutral...