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...

Assessment of climate change policies requires aggregation of costs and benefits over time and across generations, a process ordinarily done through discounting. Choosing the correct discount rate has proved controversial and highly consequential. To clarify past analysis and guide future work,...

We propose a blueprint for an international emission permit market such as the EU trading scheme. Each country decides on the amount of permits it wants to offer. A fraction of these permits is freely allocated, the remainder is auctioned. Revenues from the auction are collected in a global fund...

We demonstrate the advantages of a climate treaty based solely on rules for international permit markets when there is uncertainty about abatement costs and environmental damages. Such a ‘Rules Treaty’ comprises a scaling factor and a refunding rule. Each signatory can freely choose the...

Policies aimed at reducing emissions from fossil fuels may increase climate damages. This 'Green Paradox' emerges if resource owners increase near-term extraction in fear of stricter future policy measures. Hans-Werner Sinn (2008) showed that the paradox occurs when increasing resource taxes are...

We design a global refunding scheme as a new international approach to address climate change. A global refunding system allows each country to set its carbon emission tax, while aggregate tax revenues are partially refunded to member countries in proportion to the relative emission reductions...

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...

This paper examines the key design mechanisms of existing and proposed cap-and-trade markets. First, it is shown that the hybrid systems under investigation (safety-valve with offsets, price floor using a subsidy, price collar, allowance reserve, and options offered by the regulator) can be...