As substantive economic and social phenomena, international trade and investment are inextricably linked. Yet like twins separated at birth, for decades they have been regulated by discrete international legal systems. Despite the historic parting of their respective legal systems, international...

For some years now, the Happy Planet Organization presents the so-called ‘Happy Planet Index’ (HPI), which is an index of measuring the trade-off between ecological footprint data and life quality (Happy Life Years, HLYE). Costa Rica emerges from these comparisons as the world’s ‘best...

As the major players in globalization, firms often operate in states where human rights may not be respected. Without direct intent, firms may be complicit in human rights violations. In 2008, John Ruggie, the UN Special Representative on business and human rights, developed a framework for...

Corruption (the abuse of entrusted authority for illicit gain) is pervasive, hard to measure, and damaging both to economic growth and human rights. Corruption is also intimately associated with trade. However, the international organization governing trade, the WTO, says nothing about...

Using international data starting 1957, we construct a sample of cases where fast-growing economies slow down. The evidence suggests that rapidly growing economies slow down significantly, in the sense that the growth rate downshifts by at least 2 percentage points when their per capita incomes...

As the 2008 financial crisis spread globally, it became widely apparent that an essential ingredient to preventing future systemic crises was reform of the regulation of financial markets. Two ambitious initiatives for regulatory reform are the European Union's European System of Financial...

Greenhouse gas abatement is a public good, so climate policy is a public-goods game and suffers from the free-rider incentives that make the outcome of such games notoriously uncooperative. Adopting an international agreement can change the nature of the game, reducing or exacerbating the...