Bureaucracies may set priorities for their workload according to social goals or the desires of concentrated private interests. This paper explores bureaucratic priorities empirically by studying Superfund, the federal program for cleaning up contaminated sites. It examines the amount of time...

Policy making power enables governments to redistribute income to powerful interests in society. However, some governments exhibit greater concern for aggregate welfare than others. This government behavior may itself be endogenously determined by a number of economic, political and...

This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more left-wing. Having sons, by contrast, makes them more right-wing. Parents, politicians and voters are probably not aware of this phenomenon - nor are social scientists. The paper discusses its economic and evolutionary roots. It also...

How do foreign interests influence the policy determination process? What are the welfare implications of such foreign influence? In this paper we develop a model of foreign influence and apply it to the study of optimal tariffs. We develop a two-country voting model of electoral competition,...

We develop and test an economic theory of insurgency motivated by the informal literature and by recent military doctrine. We model a three-way contest between violent rebels, a government seeking to minimize violence by mixing service provision and coercion, and civilians deciding whether to...

Existing models of contagious currency crises are summarized and surveyed, and it is argued that more weight should be put on political factors. Towards this end, the concept of political contagion introduced, whereby contagion in speculative attacks across currencies arises solely because of...

Institutional ownership of U.S. corporations has increased ten-fold since 1950. We examine whether these new concentrated owners influence portfolio firms' political activities, as a window into the larger question of whether institutional investors can wield their control to extract benefits...

Strong sustanbility demands that decisions on climate mitigation be guided by a climate target and that compliance with the target be the primary concern prior to saving mitigation cost. Climate targets have often been formulated as temperature targets and for the case of uncertainty about...

This article investigates the trade-off between increasing welfare losses and increasing peak-warming if a temperature target is reformulated as a subsidiary concentration or cumulative emissions target. We apply a welfare maximizing integrated assessment model for a deterministic...

A large theoretical literature argues laws exert a causal effect on norms. This paper is the first to provide a clean empirical test of the proposition. Using an incentivized vignette experiment, we directly measure social norms relating to actions subject to legal thresholds. Results from three...

Wie lassen sich Glück und Nachhaltigkeit verbinden? Um die gegenwärtige ressourcenintensive Lebensweise zu überwinden, braucht es neue Leitbilder von subjektivem Wohlbefinden, die das gute Leben jenseits von Produktion und Konsum verorten. Die bisherige Debatte um Suffizienz und Postwachstum...

Introduction / Rosemarie Fike, Stefanie Haeffele, and Arielle John -- Irrationality is not unreasonable : behavioral economics, rationality, and implications for public policy / Mario J. Rizzo -- What is a nudge? / Jeffrey Bristol -- Why nudges should be local and decentralized / Katarina Hall...

Nachhaltige Entwicklung ist zu einem verankerten Leitbild in Politik, Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit geworden, welches die Diskussionen über die künftige Entwicklung der Menschheit bestimmt. Es geht im Kern um die Suche nach einem gerechten Zivilisations- und Wirtschaftsmodell,...

This book examines selected actions and investments of the European Central Bank (ECB) from a climate and sustainability standpoint. Shedding new light on the topic from various angles - ethical, philosophical, political, economical and legal - it situates sustainability mainstreaming in the...

Where do we stand when it comes to Sustainable Financial Markets? -- Ethical Standards beyond Monetary Policy: Approaches to a Philosophical Foundation -- Fundamental rights in the core business of the ECB: No issue?! Experience with the EU petition 429/2017 -- On the role of the ECB in...

This article examines the historical progress of Australian climate change policy. The article in particular examines several interesting and significant aspects of Australian climate law highlighting governmental approaches and processes leading to the introduction of those laws. The historical...

In der Februar-Umfrage des Ökonomenpanels von ifo und FAZ wurden Professoren für Volkswirtschaftslehre an deutschen Universitäten zu den Ergebnissen der Sondierungsgespräche zwischen CDU/CSU und SPD befragt. Eine Mehrzahl der Teilnehmer zeigte sich weitgehend enttäuscht von diesen...

We develop a general equilibrium model of government policy choice in which stock prices respond to political news. The model implies that political uncertainty commands a risk premium whose magnitude is larger in weaker economic conditions. Political uncertainty reduces the value of the...

Introduction -- Prologue -- True believer -- Flim-flam man -- On her own -- An association -- Contract with the devil -- Fertile ground -- Power play -- The whistle -- The World -- Damage control -- Shock waves -- Flight -- End game -- Epilogue.

Josef Braml, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik (DGAP), rechnet damit, dass die Blockade zwischen Kongress und Präsident in den USA auch nach den Kongress- und Präsidentschaftswahlen im November 2016 bestehen bleibt. Dabei wäre politisches Handeln dringend nötig, um die...

Prices for emission allowances in Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) have remained low for many years. This has given rise to controversies on whether there is a need for a fundamental reform of the ETS. Potential reform proposals include the introduction of a price floor for certificates...

Europa ist ein langfristiges Erfolgsmodell, weist aber seit der Finanzkrise ein niedriges Wachstum und eine erhöhte Arbeitslosigkeit auf. Die Einkommensdifferenzen sind zudem hoch. Europa hält sich auch nicht an seine geplante längerfristige Strategie. Die Notwendigkeit einer immer stärkeren...

Prices for emission allowances in Europe's Emissions Trading System (ETS) have remained low for many years. This has given rise to controversies on whether there is a need for a fundamental reform of the ETS. Potential reform proposals include the introduction of a price floor for certificates...

Europa ist ein langfristiges Erfolgsmodell, weist aber seit der Finanzkrise ein niedriges Wachstum und eine erhöhte Arbeitslosigkeit auf. Die Einkommensdifferenzen sind zudem hoch. Europa hält sich auch nicht an seine geplante längerfristige Strategie. Die Notwendigkeit einer immer stärkeren...

Political economy explanations for fiscal profligacy are dominated by models of bargaining among organized interest groups over group-specific targeted benefits financed by generalized taxation. These models predict that governments consisting of a coalition of political parties spend more than...

Die DAS formuliert Ziele im Kontext der ressortübergreifenden Strategie bislang sehr allgemein, was die Akzeptanz erhöht und die Übertragung auf spezifische Handlungskontexte erleichtert. Dies stellt jedoch eine Herausforderung für die Bewertung der Anpassungsfortschritte dar. Die Aufgabe...

Familienpolitik kann einen zentralen Beitrag zur wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung eines Landes leisten. Allerdings lassen sich nur schwer Aussagen darüber treffen, wie der familienpolitische Rahmen konkret ausgestaltet sein sollte, um optimale Ergebnisse zu erzielen. Daher...

The EU's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is a regional cap-and-trade program in a world with no binding international climate agreement. This climate regulation may induce a relocation of production away from Europe, with potentially negative consequences for the European economy. This...

The European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has been implemented to provide a common climate policy instrument across European Union countries, to contribute to a credible investment perspective for low-carbon investors and support further European integration of energy markets. Thus the...