China’s need to continue its economic expansion, and its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, make it unlikely that Beijing will undertake any significant greenhouse gas emissions limits in the coming years. If China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is unwilling to reduce...

The May 2009 Rose Garden ceremony for President Obama’s signing of new fuel efficiency mandates for automobiles was attended by a remarkable gathering of “bootleggers and Baptists” - “Baptist” environmentalists who were pleased to get a policy they desired, and “bootlegger”...

To use or conserve environmental and natural resources effectively is complex. Many economists believe that institutional solutions built around markets and property rights can help improve results. This approach addresses what Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto termed the “missing lessons of...

U.S. economic history has been heavily influenced by mobile “go-getters” - young entrepreneurs, inventors, skilled laborers, and innovators. That appears to still be the case today, as both foreign and domestic go-getters are attracted to high-skilled jobs and high-risk opportunities. What...

President Obama's Executive Order 13563 is the latest presidential effort to exert control over the federal government's regulatory Leviathan. The new order contains some noteworthy innovations, but at heart it is little different from President Richard Nixon's October 1971 order that...

Despite being a fixture of everyday life in the Arab world, wasta, which may be thought of as special influence by members of the same group or tribe, has received little attention from social scientists. Our casual empiricism suggests that wasta is an important determinant of how economic...