Economic development is associated with the shift of production from the traditional sector (e.g. traditional agriculture and the urban informal sector) to the modern sector (e.g. modern manufacturing and commercial agriculture). Human capital accumulation, particularly, education and job...

We examine the constitutional design required for democratic societies to overcome poverty traps. Restricting agenda-setting only by ensuring subsistence levels of consumption and applying simple majority voting as decision rule fails to enable a society to overcome poverty because it does not...

Spanish Abstract: Este artículo emplea un conjunto de datos reciente que distingue entre desigualdad neta y de mercado, y permite calcular las transferencias redistributivas anuales de un gran número de países. Las principales conclusiones son: 1. Sociedades más desiguales tienden a...

Technology policy is the most widespread form of climate policy and is often preferred over seemingly efficient carbon pricing. We propose a new explanation for this observation: gains that predominantly accrue to households with large capital assets and that influence majority decisions in...

The prevailing literature discusses intergenerational trade-offs predominantly in infinitely-lived agent models despite the finite lifetime of individuals. We discuss these trade-offs in a continuous time OLG framework and relate the results to the infinitely-lived agent setting. We identify...

We examine a global refunding scheme for mitigating climate change. Countries pay an initial fee into a global fund that is invested in long-run assets. In each period, part of the fund is distributed among the participating countries in relation to the emission reductions they have achieved in...

This paper compares the distributional effects of price cap and lump sum transfer policies to aid the affordability of subsistence electricity consumption. A lump sum transfer is more progressive than a comparable price cap on all units of electricity. We identify conditions under which these...

Judged by the principle of intertemporal Pareto optimality, insecure property rights and the greenhouse effect both imply overly rapid extraction of fossil carbon resources. A gradual expansion of demand-reducing public policies - such as increasing ad-valorem taxes on carbon consumption or...

If investors fear that future carbon taxes will be lower than currently announced by policy makers, long-run investments in greenhouse gas mitigation may be smaller than desirable. On the other hand, owners of a non-renewable carbon resource that underestimate future carbon taxes will postpone...

This paper studies the implications for climate policy of the interactions between environmental and knowledge externalities. Using a numerical analysis performed with the hybrid integrated assessment model WITCH, extended to include mutual spillovers between the energy and the non-energy...