The crises of both the climate and the biosphere are manifestations of the imbalance between human extractive, and polluting activities and the Earth's regenerative capacity. Planetary boundaries define limits for biophysical systems and processes that regulate the stability and life support...

We investigate to which extent the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), set up by the G20 in 2011, can help to reduce food price volatility. Linking uncertainty about fundamentals and volatility in a theoretical model, we show that the uncertainty provides an upper limit for the...

Despite the growing concern about actual on-going climate change, there is little consensus about the scale and timing of actions needed to stabilise the concentrations of greenhouse gases. Many countries are unwilling to implement effective mitigation strategies, at least in the short-term, and...

We show that ambiguity aversion increases the value of a statistical life as soon as the marginal utility of wealth is higher if alive than dead. The intuition is that ambiguity aversion has a similar effect as an increase in the perceived baseline mortality risk, and thus operates as the...

The analysis of horizontal mergers hinges on a tradeoff between unilateral effects and efficiency gains. The article examines the role of uncertainty (on the efficiency gains) in this tradeoff. Common wisdom is that the antitrust authorities should be very cautious about random gains. Our...

Climate physics predicts that the intensity of natural disasters will increase in the future due to climate change. We present a stochastic model of a growing economy where natural disasters are multiple and random, with damages driven by the economy’s polluting activity. We provide a...

According to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, global collective action is needed to stabilize “greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous [our emphasis] anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The Framework Convention thus...

This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment beginning in 2001 and a change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience more severe employment...

This paper analyses the formation of international environmental agreements (IEAs) under uncertainty, focusing on the role of learning and risk aversion. It bridges two strands of literature: one focused on the role learning for the success of IEA formation when countries are risk neutral and...

If the threshold that triggers climate catastrophe is known with certainty, and the benefits of avoiding catastrophe are high relative to the costs, treaties can easily coordinate countries’ behavior so as to avoid the threshold. Where the net benefits of avoiding catastrophe are lower,...