education poverty and terrorism is there a causal connection the paper investigates whether there is a connection between poverty or low education and terrorism we review evidence on hate crimes which are closely related to terrorism the occurrence of hate crimes is largely independent of economic conditions we analyze data on support for attacks against israeli targets from public opinion polls conducted in the west bank and gaza strip support for violent attacks does not decrease among those with higher education and higher living standards the core contribution of the paper is a statistical analysis of the determinants of participation in hezbollah militant activities having a living standard above the poverty line or a secondary or higher education is positively associated with participation in hezbollah we also find that israeli jewish settlers who attacked palestinians in the west bank in the early 1980s were overwhelmingly from high paying occupations although our results are tentative and exploratory they suggest that neither poverty nor education has a direct causal impact on terrorism

bargaining enforcement and multilateral sanctions when is cooperation counterproductive scholars and policymakers generally assume that multilateral cooperation is a necessary condition for economic sanctions to be of any use however previous statistical tests of this assumption have shown that sanctions are more successful with lower levels of cooperation this puzzle calls into question established theories of economic statecraft as well as theories of international cooperation in this article i test possible explanations for the ineffectiveness of multilateral cooperation on sanctions events using james fearon s 1998 breakdown of cooperation into bargaining and enforcement phases as a framework for discussion the empirical results show that when multilateral economic sanctions fail their failure is due to enforcement not bargaining problems without the support of an international organization cooperating states backslide from promises of cooperation backsliding occurs because of domestic political pressures and uncertainty about the intentions of the other sanctioning countries backsliding causes an initial burst of cooperative behavior to decay over time without institutional support cooperation is worse than useless it is counterproductive this result suggests that international cooperation is a more fragile equilibrium than previously thought but undercuts realist arguments that international organizations are unimportant

the international telecommunications regime the political roots of regimes for high technology the international telecommunications regime provided a multilateral framework that reinforced domestic monopolies and bilateral cartel arrangements in the global market the regime s epistemic community believed that telecommunications services and equipment were best supplied by national monopolies and that international communications by telephone telegram and telex should be jointly provided by monopolists strong domestic political incentives reinforced this cognitive framework when technological innovation triggered a successful political attack on the domestic regulation of telecommunications in a few key countries the stage was set for a global challenge to the intellectual and political foundations of the regime two paths to reform have emerged their significance can be assessed by looking at changes in the distribution of benefits from the regime changes in the manner in which governments delegate power to the regime and shifts in the epistemic community associated with the regime

household preferences of hybrid home heating systems a choice experiment application abstract the residential heating sector presents considerable energy savings potential as numerous heating solutions for reducing electricity consumption and utilizing renewable energy sources are available in the market the aim of this paper is to examine determinants of household heating system choices and to use this information for policy planning purposes this paper investigates residential homeowner attitudes regarding innovative hybrid home heating systems hhhs with choice experiment heating system scenarios are designed to represent the most relevant primary and supplementary heating alternatives currently available in finland the choice sets include six main heating alternatives district heat solid wood wood pellet electric storage heating ground heat pump and exhaust air heat pump that are described by five attributes supplementary heating systems investment costs operating costs comfort of use and environmental friendliness the results imply that hhhss generally appear to be accepted among households however several factors affect perceptions of these technologies the results reveal differing household attitudes toward the main heating alternatives and show that such views are affected by socio demographic characteristics age living environment education etc the results suggest that households view supplementary heating systems especially solar based favorably the other attributes studied also play a significant role in decision making

after the break up institutional design in transitional states this article integrates historical and rational choice approaches to institutional origin and change to explain the establishment of electoral systems in three former soviet central asian republics kazakhstan kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan it argues that institutions designed under transitional circumstances are products of the interaction between the preceding historical and institutional setting and the dynamic uncertainty that surrounds them strategic actors engaged in the process of institutional design use both contexts in order to assess the degree to and direction in which their relative power is changing they then negotiate accordingly so as to attain their preferred institutional outcomes central asia s electoral systems in particular can be best understood as the product of very similar and long standing regional power struggles being played out under varying dynamic and uncertain conditions

household energy and climate mitigation policies investigating energy practices in the housing sector abstract one central aim of climate change mitigation in the european union is to reduce energy consumption in the housing sector in order to ensure effectiveness of policies targeting household energy conservation it is important to investigate existing energy practices of different social groups this article describes and explains energy practices in three leading states in environmental politics technological innovation and support for renewable energy production denmark austria and the united kingdom based on a longitudinal analysis of housing utility costs from the european community statistics on income and living conditions we show that income plays a central role in households energy practices while high income households have higher overall energy consumption low income groups spend a larger share of their income on utility costs the variation of energy consumption across income groups is related to household characteristics characteristics of the dwellings and cross national differences in the housing sector

a new statecraft supranational entrepreneurs and international cooperation studies of international regimes law and negotiation as well as regional integration near universally conclude that political entrepreneurship by high officials of international organizations supranational entrepreneurship decisively influences the outcomes of multilateral negotiations studies of the european community ec have long stressed their informal agenda setting mediation and mobilization yet the studies underlying this interdisciplinary consensus tend to be anecdotal atheoretical and uncontrolled the study reported here derives and tests explicit hypotheses from general theories of political entrepreneurship and tests them across multiple cases the five most important ec negotiations while controlling for the actions of national governments two findings emerge first supranational entrepreneurship is generally redundant or futile governments can almost always efficiently act as their own entrepreneurs second rare cases of entrepreneurial success arise not when officials intervene to help overcome interstatecollective action problems as current theories presume but when they help overcome domestic or transnational collective action problems this suggests fundamental refinements in the core assumptions about transaction costs underlying general theories of international regimes law and negotiation

how much is too much an investigation of the effect of the number of choice sets context dependence and the choice of bid vectors in choice experiments in a split sample design we examine how the number of choice sets design of the first choice set context dependence and the choice of attribute levels in the cost attribute affect the precision in the elicited preferences in otherwise completely identical choice experiment surveys these issues are investigated for swedish households marginal willingness to pay to reduce power outages our results indicate that neither the number of choice sets nor the design of the first choice set has a significant impact on estimated marginal willingness to pay while the effect was significant for the additive scaling of the cost vector at the end of the article we discuss the implications of our results on future developments and applications of choice experiments

explaining cooperation under anarchy hypotheses and strategies what circumstances favor the realization of mutual interests in the absence of centralized authority and through what strategies can nations foster the emergence of cooperation by altering the circumstances that they confront elementary game theory suggests three sets of conditions that serve as proximate explanations of the incidence of cooperation and discord i payoff structure mutual and conflicting preferences 2 the shadow of the future single play and iterated games and 3 number of players two person and n person games each of these three attributes of context may be subject to willful modification nations may create the preconditions for cooperation through strategies to alter payoffs lengthen the shadow of the future and reduce the number of actors required to realize limited mutual interests

multilateralism bilateralism and exclusion in the nuclear proliferation regime i use the nuclear proliferation regime to show that dyadic diplomacy is not necessarily incompatible with the building of a multilateral regime bilateralism is not the opposite of multilateralism but an efficient component thereof although this point will not be new to most students of institutions no general rationale has so far been offered on the complementarity of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy start ing from a characterization of proliferation as the result of a large number of prisoner s dilemmas played out between states engaged in local dyadic rivalries i demonstrate that it is possible for the superpowers to design an optimal mix of threats and bribes in which states with low compliance costs join the regime on the terms of the multi lateral treaty alone states with intermediate compliance costs need additional cus tomized incentives delivered through bilateral agreements and states with high compliance costs are not only left out of the regime but also punished for nonpartici pation i draw a few comparative statics that i systematically test on nuclear prolif eration treaty npt membership data i discuss the applicability of the model to the currency trade and aid regimes

less filling tastes great the realist neoliberal debate this essay examines and reformulates the realist neoliberal debate focusing initially on the issue of the attribution of goals to states we argue that not only are goals merely the epiphenomena of other things but also that their specification constitutes but a re description of strategic environments that is although an attribution of goals may contribute to our characterization of outcomes a discussion of them is not central to the development of a theory that explains and predicts the outbreak of conflict and the patterns of cooperation instead we argue that the realist neoliberal debate should be recast so that our central research agenda is the development of substantively specific models that allow us to ascertain how the equilibrium to a game in which states structure international affairs influences the types of issue specific subgames states play how countries coordinate to equilibria of different types how we can characterize the coordination problems associated with different equilibria how states can enhance the attractiveness of an equilibrium and how states can signal commitments to the strategies that are part of that equilibrium

market barriers to energy efficiency abstract discussions of energy policy in an environmentally constrained world often focus on the use of tax instruments to internalize the external effects of energy utilization or achieve specified reductions in energy use in the most cost effective manner a substantial literature suggests however that significant opportunities exist to reduce energy utilization by implementing technologies that are cost effective under prevailing economic conditions but that are not fully implemented by existing market institutions this paper examines the theory of the market for energy using equipment showing that problems of imperfect information and transaction costs may bias rational consumers to purchase devices that use more energy than those that would be selected by a well informed social planner guided by the criterion of economic efficiency consumers must base their purchase decisions on observed prices and expectations of post purchase equipment performance if it is difficult or costly for individuals to form accurate and precise expectations the level of energy efficiency achieved by competitive markets will vary from the socially efficient outcome such market barriers suggest a role for regulatory intervention to improve market performance at prevailing energy prices

international institutions and economic sanctions economic sanctions have long occupied the attention of both scholars and policy makers despite the widespread use of sanctions many observers have concluded that the inherent problems associated with imposing sanctions involving multiple senders substantially limit their effectiveness this article reviews two books that analyze the factors that influence cooperation among senders of multilateral sanctions these books indicate that international institutions can do much to promote cooperation of this sort however this essay argues that the extent to which international institutions facilitate cooperation among senders of sanctions is likely to depend on the domestic politics of members the type of institution being used for this purpose the nature of the strategy being pursued and the distribution of power among members although these books make significant contributions to our understanding of the factors that promote cooperation among senders of multilateral sanctions they examine the factors that promote the effectiveness of sanctions in only a peripheral manner one potential influence on the effectiveness of sanctions that are organized by an international institution however is the likelihood that the institution will be captured by member states or by interest groups within them additional research that investigates the conditions under which international institutions are likely to be captured and the implications of institutional capture for their performance may therefore prove useful to scholars of international relations and economic statecraft

behavioral economics for environmental policy abstract the predictions of widely prescribed global and country level environmental policies at present are based mainly on mainstream economic models which treat individual actors to be unboundedly rational in their decision making in recent years however behavioral and experimental economists have found that the individual actors in many circumstances act within a bounded rationality framework suggesting that predictions based on the unbounded rationality models would be less valid while some of mainstream economists have already started adopting the bounded rationality based models in their academic discourse many environmental economists seem to be reluctant to use these alternative models of rationality in their research and policy prescriptions this paper highlights the implications of using bounded rationality models in environmental research in general and policymaking in particular

an exclusive country club the effects of the gatt on trade 1950 94 using data on bilateral trade flows from both before and after world war ii this article examines the impact of the general agreement on tariffs and trade on trade between its members and on the system of interwar trade blocs it shows that the distribution of the benefits produced by the gatt was much more highly skewed than conventional wisdom assumes the article also shows that the gold commonwealth reichsmark and exchange control blocs exerted positive and significant effects on trade after 1945 the authors attribute these effects to the bargaining protocol that governed successive rounds of gatt negotiations the signature element of the postwar trade regime

a comparative study of inequality and corruption this article argues that income inequality increases the level of corruption through material and normative mechanisms the wealthy have both greater motivation and more opportunity to engage in corruption whereas the poor are more vulnerable to extortion and less able to monitor and hold the rich and powerful accountable as inequality increases inequality also adversely affects social norms about corruption and people s beliefs about the legitimacy of rules and institutions thereby making it easier for them to tolerate corruption as acceptable behavior this comparative analysis of 129 countries using two stage least squares methods with a variety of instrumental variables supports the authors hypotheses using different measures of corruption the world bank s control of corruption index and the transparency international s corruption perceptions index the explanatory power of inequality is at least as important as conventionally accepted causes of corruption such as economic development the autho

the gains debate framing state choice the theoretical bifurcation of international relations theory into neo realist and neo liberal camps has resulted in a gains debate that says little about an empirical world in which states exhibit both relative and absolute gains pursuit this article deploys prospect theory in an attempt to move beyond the gains debate the intent here is synthetic by bringing the predictions of both perspectives under a single theoretical umbrella we can model a broader set of state behavior the thesis developed demonstrates that states in a gains frame pursue absolute gains and are risk averse while states in a losses frame pursue relative gains and are risk acceptant this hypothesis is assessed against the behavior of the european community in the formation of the montreal protocol a regime intended to protect the earth s protective ozone shield the new model accurately predicts the timing and content of shifts in ec preferences suggesting that a synthesis of realist and liberal approaches is possible

entrenching the yoshida defense doctrine three techniques for institutionalization japan s level of defense expenditure relative to tbe size of its economy bas long been uniquely low among the major industrialized countries as of 1995 japan s expenditures stood at 0 96 percent of gross domestic product gdp even adding to this tbe approximately 0 3 percent of gdp devoted to pensions for retired personnel the level of spending is considerably less than that of major westem states such as tbe united states united kingdom france and germany as well as industrialized asian states such as south korea taiwan malaysia and singapore furthermore these relative magnitudes have remained reasonably stable over tbe past few decades see table 1 defense expenditure as a percentage of gdp or gnp gross national product often referred to simply as defense burden has over tbe past few decades become the standard benchmark for measuring a state s relative contribution to international security because of this tbe appropriateness and consequences of japan s relatively low expenditure of national wealth on defense bave been hotly debated botb in japan and abroad critics accuse japan of unfairly exploiting a defense free ride to build its economic success and others worry that japan s lack of military capabilities prevents it from becoming a normal state whose political role is commensurate

political leadership and regime formation on the development of institutions in international society leadership plays a critical but poorly understood role in determining the success or failure of the processes of institutional bargaining that dominate efforts to form international regimes or more generally institutional arrangements in international society an examination of the nature of institutional bargaining serves as a springboard both for pinpointing the role of leadership in regime formation and for differentiating three forms of leadership that regularly come into play in efforts to establish international institutions structural leadership entrepreneurial leadership and intellectual leadership because much of the real work of regime formation occurs in the interplay of different types of leadership the study of interactions among individual leaders is a high priority for those seeking to illuminate the processes involved in the creation of international institutions not only does such a study help to explain the conditions under which regimes form or fail to form but it also provides an opportunity to bring the individual back in to an important area of international affairs

do middle classes bring about institutional reforms abstract we reexamine the association between poverty the middle class and institutional outcomes using a newly developed cross country panel dataset containing detailed information on the distribution of income and expenditure when the size of the middle class increases measured as the proportion of people with income above 10 us dollars a day in purchasing power parity ppp terms social policy on health and education becomes more active and the quality of governance regarding democratic participation and official corruption improves this does not occur at the expense of economic freedom as an expansion of the middle class also implies more market oriented economic policy on trade and finance in these respects the impact of a larger middle class appears to be more robust than those of lower poverty lower inequality or higher gross domestic product gdp per capita

green electricity investments environmental target and the optimal subsidy abstract we investigate the optimal investment decision in renewables under market demand uncertainty in the context of the italian strategy for renewable deployment under the eu policy the firm has to decide about the time and size of the investment we find that a higher subsidy level induces the firm to invest earlier with a smaller investment capacity this implies that a given environmental target cannot be reached by a too high too low subsidy level since this will cause the investment level to be too low too late we show that there exists an optimal intermediate subsidy level due to uncertain demand in some cases ensuring to reach the environmental target in time requires an additional conditional subsidy we propose a heuristic for policy makers stating when and how much subsidy to provide furthermore we find that in a more uncertain economic environment the subsidy adjustment to maintain the target level of investment results in the firm investing earlier which is opposite to the standard real options result

new ways of looking at old issues inequality and growth abstract the paper uses new cross country data on income and asset land distribution to show that i there is a strong negative relationship between initial inequality in the asset distribution and long term growth ii inequality reduces income growth for the poor but not for the rich and iii available longitudinal data provide little support for the kuznets hypothesis policies that increase aggregate investment and facilitate acquisition of assets by the poor might thus be doubly beneficial for growth and poverty reduction

coordination and collaboration regimes in an anarchic world the study of regimes can contribute to our understanding of international politics only if regimes represent more than international organizations and less than all international relations the conceptualization of regimes developed here accepts the realist image of international politics in which autonomous self interested states interact in an anarchic environment yet there are situations in which rational actors have an incentive to eschew unconstrained independent decision making situations in which individualistic self interested calculation leads them to prefer joint decision making regimes because independent self interested behavior can result in undesirable or suboptimal outcomes these situations are labeled dilemmas of common interests and dilemmas of common aversions to deal with these states must collaborate with one another or coordinate their behavior respectively thus there are different bases for regimes which give rise to regimes with different characteristics coordination is self enforcing and can be reached through the use of conventions collaboration is more formalized and requires mechanisms both to monitor potential cheating and to insure compliance with the regime the article elucidates the assumptions of such an interest based approach to regimes assimilates alternative explanations into this framework and develops the implications for regime maintenance and change

setting international standards technological rationality or primacy of power standards have become one of the most important nontariff barriers to trade especially national product standards that specify design or performance characteristics of manufactured goods divergent national standards often inhibit trade whereas regional and international standards increasingly serve as instruments of trade liberalization consequently the setting of international standards seemingly technical and apolitical is rapidly becoming an issue of economic and political salience but who sets international standards who wins who loses this article offers a fresh analytical approach to the study of international standards which the authors call the institutional complementarities approach it builds on insights from realism and the battle of the sexes coordination game but emphasizes complementarities of historically conditioned standardization systems at the national level with the institutional structure of standardization at the international level it posits that after controlling for other factors that influence involvement in international standardization differences in institutional complementarities play a critical though largely accidental role in placing firms from different countries or regions in a first or second mover position when standardization becomes global the authors illustrate the insightfulness of this approach through statistical analyses of the first scientific set of data on standards use and standardization collected by the authors through an international online survey

bargaining enforcement and international cooperation neoliberals and their neorealist critics have debated the relative importance of two main obstacles to international cooperation problems of cheating and enforcement and problems of relative gains by contrast i argue that problems of international cooperation have a common strategic structure in which a third distinct obstacle plays a crucial role almost regardless of the issue area states must first resolve the bargaining problem of agreeing on terms before they can implement and begin to enforce an agreement furthermore the bargaining and enforcement problems interact using a game model i show that if states must bargain to determine the deal to be enforced the shadow of the future cuts two ways a high expectation of continued interactions may make enforcing the agreement easier but it can also give states an incentive to bargain harder delaying agreement in hopes of getting a better deal empirical evidence from trade and arms control negotiations suggests that this mechanism may help to explain the costly standoffs that are often observed in international politics and are problematic for received neoliberal theories

hierarchy versus inertial cooperation it is somewhat embarrassing for an economist and economic historian with the usual strong sense of turf and a need to be identified with his own to find his name cropping up from time to time in the foreign field of political science true the conclusion of my book on the depression borrowed the concept of leadership from political scientists norman frohlich and joe a oppenheimer who put forth the notion that public goods would be underproduced because of free riders unless a leader agreed to bear a disproportionate share of their costs my conclusion stated that the 1929 depression was so wide so deep and so long because no leading country was able and willing to discharge the role of a stabilizer the united kingdom could not the united states with or without the help of france would not 2 the responsibilities of a stabilizer as i originally detailed them were to furnish an outlet for distress goods or in periods of acute shortage to share its supplies with highly dependent countries to maintain the flow of capital to would be borrowers and to serve as a lender of last resort in financial crisis 3 since that book appeared in 1973 i have added two other responsibilities to the role of a would be stabilizer of the world economy to maintain a structure of exchange rates and to coordinate macroeconomic policies 4 political science has now transmuted the concept of leadership into hegemony a word that makes me uncomfortable because of its overtones of force threat pressure i think it is possible to lead without arm twisting

do environmental benefits matter evidence from a choice experiment among house owners in germany residential buildings strongly contribute to global co2 emissions due to the high energy demand for electricity and heating particularly in industrialised countries within the eu decentralised heat generation is of particular relevance for future climate policy as its emissions are not covered by the eu ets we conducted a choice experiment concerning energy retrofits for existing houses in germany in the experiment the approximately 400 sampled house owners could either choose a modern heating system or an improved thermal insulation for their home we used standard and mixed logit specifications to analyse the choice data we found environmental benefits to have a significant impact on choices of heating systems however they played no role in terms of insulation choices based on the estimated mixed logit model we further obtained willingness to pay wtp measures for co2 savings

environmental attitudes as wtp predictors a case study involving endangered species this paper investigates environmental attitudes as significant motives for the behavioral intention of willingness to pay wtp involving endangered species in a choice modeling context and examines the underlying causal mechanism pro environmental attitudes are measured using the new ecological paradigm nep scale although the empirical evidence of this paper supports a significant attitude wtp association the causal mechanism is different from previous theorizing when observed at the parameter level using random parameter logit models the significant causal linkages are evident with both the target good and the payment variable the findings of this paper not only support direct and indirect impacts of general attitudes on wtp but also provide novel findings about the causal mechanism for a significant attitude wtp relationship at the parameter level in a non western case study the impact of past visiting experience was also significant on the relationship undermining the impact of attitudes on wtp

interests power and multilateralism multilateralism characterizes to varying degrees patterns of interaction among states and the formal organizations they construct the utility of multilateral norms or organizations varies with the type of cooperation problem states confront thus the functional logic of international cooperation leads to hypotheses about the conditions under which the institution of multilateralism may be a feasible and efficient solution as in coordination problems and those under which it will not as in collaboration problems within these constraints powerful states choose institutions that will serve their interests with multilateral arrangements becoming more attractive as the future is valued more highly multilateral institutions should be stable in circumstances of changing distributions of power relative to more hierarchical institutions the vulnerability of patterns of international cooperation to various exogenous changes depends on the type of strategic interaction underlying state behavior

possibilities for co2 neutral manufacturing with attractive energy costs abstract in germany energy costs for small and medium sized enterprises are increasing despite declining power prices on the european energy exchange eex resulting from levies surcharges and taxes in order to reduce energy costs in manufacturing companies the self supply using renewable energies is becoming a viable option for an increasing number of companies this article therefore uses a case study approach to investigate whether the investment in renewable power plants for partial self supply could be financially beneficial using a specifically developed simulation scenarios have been created to show various energy supply options to satisfy the energy demand of a medium sized manufacturing company the scenarios range from a complete energy supply obtained from an external provider to the other extreme of a complete and therefore autarkic supply from a virtual power plant vpp all scenarios work with a balanced demand and supply at 15 min intervals over a period of one year during which demand is the determining factor the scenarios are based on real case data for energy demand measured local weather data and realistically calculated data for the vpp depending on the scenario the proposed vpps consist of power plants using wind solar and biomass as primary energies and thermal and electric storage the results show that compared to the full provision of energy through a local energy provider adopting a partial self supply of renewable energy is a very attractive option in financial terms

poverty political freedom and the roots of terrorism this article provides an empirical investigation of the determinants of terrorism at the country level in contrast with the previous literature on this subject which focuses on transnational terrorism only i use a new measure of terrorism that encompasses both domestic and transnational terrorism in line with the results of some recent studies this article shows that terrorist risk is not significantly higher for poorer countries once the effects of other country specific characteristics such as the level of political freedom are taken into account political freedom is shown to explain terrorism but it does so in a non monotonic way countries in some intermediate range of political freedom are shown to be more prone to terrorism than countries with high levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes this result suggests that as experienced recently in iraq and previously in spain and russia transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy may be accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism finally the results suggest that geographic factors are important to sustain terrorist activities this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

international law and domestic institutions reconciling north american unfair trade laws while scholars have written much about the role played by international institutions in cooperative behavior among nations they have not examined the domestic political motives that may lie behind nations decisions to join such organizations two level games analysis provides a framework for studying domestic politics not as a constraint upon nations that enter into international agreements but as a catalyst for nations to enter into agreements the dispute settlement procedures of the north american free trade agreement and its predecessor the canada u s free trade agreement offer an empirical illustration of this point

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

economic versus belief based models shedding light on the adoption of novel green technologies abstract understanding the determinants for the adoption of novel green consumer technologies is important to effectively foster their diffusion energy and environmental science literature often takes an approach based on economic variables such as objectively measureable household and technology characteristics increasingly also subjective variables based on personal belief are considered on the basis of a survey about the intention to adopt an exemplary novel green consumer technology intelligent thermostats we contribute to the clarification of the explanatory power of these two approaches we first compare the economic model to the belief based model and second investigate how beliefs about the green technology are influenced by personal environmental norms and innovativeness our evaluation shows that the belief based model explains considerably higher variance in the intention to adopt thereby the perceived hedonic satisfaction usefulness habit and facilitating conditions reveal as key determinants moreover environmental norms show lower impact than personal innovativeness in the discussion we consolidate these findings and point to the risk of omitted variable bias when selectively including belief based variables in adoption models our findings suggest that policies can effectively accelerate the early market diffusion of green consumer technologies by incentivizing retailers to introduce and market such technologies

money talks supplementary financiers and international monetary fund conditionality what explains the changes in international monetary fund imf conditionality i argue that imf conditionality agreements are influenced by supplementary financiers the imf regularly relies on external financing to supplement its loans to countries facing payments imbalances as a result these supplementary financiers are able to exercise leverage over the imf and the design of its conditionality programs i consider the influence of one type of supplementary financier private financial institutions on imf conditionality conclusions are supported by a data set of 249 conditionality arrangements coded according to their terms and two case studies

exploring domestic energy saving the role of environmental concern and background variables abstract the main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether residents environmental concern has any effect on their energy saving curtailments and efficiency investments the novelty of the present work lies in the fact that it seeks to investigate this topic in a multi country setting exploiting data from nine oecd countries australia canada czech republic france italy south korea netherlands norway and sweden and also in that it employs a latent variable model which allows us to examine the conditions necessary for the results to be comparable across different countries novel in this paper is also the focus on the role of environmental concern as a factor of several curtailments and efficiency investments our results suggest that people with higher environmental concern are on average more likely to perform energy saving curtailments and also are more likely to have some energy efficiency retrofits installed in dwellings most of the socio economic and demographic variables have mixed effects on efficiency investments and curtailments however some interesting patterns emerged with respect to the age of respondents household income education and gender of respondents and also the size of household

economic freedom government policy and the trade off between equity and economic growth this study investigates the role that economicfreedom plays in economic growth and in the distribution in marketincome the role of government policy in advancingeconomic progress and in promoting income equality and the effectthat the rate of economic progress has on thedistribution of market income structural and reduced formmodels are estimated that reveal that economic freedompromotes both economic growth and equity and that there is apositive but relatively small trade off between growth andincome inequality

accounting for uncertainty in willingness to pay for environmental benefits previous literature on the distribution of willingness to pay has focused on its heterogeneity distribution without addressing exact interval estimation in this paper we derive and analyze bayesian confidence sets for quantifying uncertainty in the determination of willingness to pay for carbon dioxide abatement we use two empirical case studies household decisions of energy efficient heating versus insulation and purchase decisions of ultralow emission vehicles we first show that deriving credible sets using the posterior distribution of the willingness to pay is straightforward in the case of deterministic consumer heterogeneity however when using individual estimates which is the case for the random parameters of the mixed logit model it is complex to define the distribution of interest for the interval estimation problem this latter problem is actually more involved than determining the moments of the heterogeneity distribution of the willingness to pay using frequentist econometrics a solution that we propose is to derive and then summarize the distribution of point estimates of the individual willingness to pay under different loss functions

economic inequality and its socioeconomic impact abstract income inequality is of fundamental interest not only to economists but also to other social scientists a substantial literature in economics and the social sciences has investigated the relationship between income inequality and economic growth and a variety of social phenomena the links between inequality and economic growth are explored as well as those between inequality and such key social variables as political conflict education health and crime the analysis in this paper follows a two step process first a review of the empirical evidence relating inequality to growth and to each of the above social variables is undertaken second the various causal mechanisms that have been proposed in the social science literature to explain those links are surveyed

explaining institutional change policy areas outside options and the bretton woods institutions i propose and test a theoretical framework that explains institutional change in international relations like firms in markets international institutions are affected by the underlying characteristics of their policy areas some policy areas are prone to produce institutions facing relatively little competition limiting the outside options of member states and impeding redistributive change in comparison institutions facing severe competition will quickly reflect changes in underlying state interests and power to test the theory empirically i exploit common features of the bretton woods institutions the international monetary fund and world bank to isolate the effect of variation in policy area characteristics the empirical tests show that despite having identical membership and internal rules bargaining outcomes in the bretton woods institutions have diverged sharply and in accordance with the theory

the politics of international regime formation managing natural resources and the environment why do actors in international society succeed in forming institutional arrangements or regimes to cope with some transboundary problems but fail to do so in connection with other seemingly similar problems this article employs a threefold strategy to make progress toward answering this question the first section prepares the ground by identifying and critiquing the principal models embedded in the existing literature on regime formation and the second section articulates an alternative model called institutional bargaining the third section employs this alternative model to derive some hypotheses about the determinants of success in institutional bargaining and uses these hypotheses in a preliminary way to illuminate the process of regime formation in international society to lend empirical content to the argument the article focuses throughout on problems relating to natural resources and the environment

domestic institutions and international regulatory cooperation comparative responses to the convention on biological diversity international regimes develop in three general ways through coercion convergence harmony or mutual state choice lasting coercive cooperation is rare 1 harmony is of limited interest 2 in the majority of cases and those of the greatest theoretical and practical significance regimes arise through explicit state choices to cooperate this article explores state choice toward international regulatory regimes for environmental protection regulatory regimes are frequently aimed at diffuse private actors and behaviors international regime rules are commonly transformed into binding domestic rules or standards regulatory cooperation and environmental cooperation in particular is marked by the degree to which this process of implementation relies upon and is shaped by existing domestic institutions and political structures because regulatory regimes at the international level are nearly always administrated through regulatory regimes at the domestic level the latter in conjunction with the politics new regulation end page 482 engenders are central to understanding state choice while many analyses have examined the role of domestic politics in international cooperation i focus on domestic institutions this article shows how institutions in conjunction with the interests of key societal actors and the political incentives faced by governments help to determine the expected political economic and legal impact of international commitments given that states are collectively the architects of international institutions and these anticipated effects thus partly endogenous the domestic regulatory structures of powerful states can also be critical influences on the scope structure and terms of international institutions to develop these claims i examine an important recent case of international environmental cooperation the protection of global biological diversity biodiversity and analyze the divergent responses of two leading states to the core agreement of the new regime while the united kingdom signed and ratified the convention on biological diversity cbd 3 negotiated as one of the keystones of the 1992 united nations conference on environment and development unced the united states refused to do so both states were active participants in the negotiations and shared a host of similarities the likelihood both of harm from biodiversity loss and of gain from biodiversity protection positions as economic powers intensity of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries antiregulatory leadership and positions on critical issues like intellectual property protection two theoretical perspectives that examine areas of potential difference are used to explore this divergence in choice toward the cbd building on the seemingly central role played by science and scientists in the formation of environmental regimes peter haas and others have developed a prominent knowledge based account of state behavior in which epistemic influence built on positive and normative understandings shared by an elite community of experts explains much of the observed intergovernmental coordination in environmental affairs 4 an alternative perspective that i term regulatory politics proposes that variations in core domestic institutions critically shape the anticipated impact of regime rules and hence the domestic politics of international cooperation

willingness to pay for carbon offset certification and co benefits among high flying young adults in the uk voluntary carbon offsets represent a growing share of the carbon market as a whole and have the potential to contribute to meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets and reducing anthropogenic climate change certain offset project types may also deliver co benefits including safeguarding or promoting biodiversity supporting human development and poverty reduction and enabling market and technology development in low carbon sectors these co benefits might encourage consumers to participate in the voluntary offset market depending on their effects both on consumers willingness to pay wtp for offsets and on implementation costs however the offset market is not yet sufficiently developed to give a clear indication of consumer wtp for offsets with varying attributes this exploratory stated preference study therefore uses a choice experiment to estimate wtp for certified and uncertified offsets with or without these specific co benefits in an aviation context it is to the best of our knowledge the first to do so our results suggest that uptake of voluntary offsets may be encouraged by investing in projects with co benefits and by emphasising those co benefits to consumers they also suggest that certification regimes will add value to offsets helping compensate for increased costs provided that consumers are made fully aware of them

introduction to the special issue things we do and don t understand about the household and the environment environmental economics has been slow to incorporate the full and complex nature of the household into its analytical structures and to reflect empirical evidence on household decision making this paper provides an overview of some of the main unanswered questions

bargaining uncertainty and property rights in fisheries garrett hardin s tragedy of the commons metaphor is commonly invoked to account for the unfortunate state of world fisheries but the world s oceans are no longer a global commons and have not been so for the past two decades open access regimes have persisted within many exclusive economic zones eezs during this time but coastal states authority to regulate domestic fisheries has existed for more than a generation faced with the prospect of hardin s tragedy coastal states have had more than twenty years to devise institutional constraints that would prevent it this article asserts that the dismal experience with eezs is in large part attributable to distributive bargaining problems that arose within coastal states in the wake of eez extension moreover the article argues that high levels of uncertainty that characterize the early stages of institutional development have exacerbated these problems finally the article demonstrates how the variety of institutional designs and paths of institutional development that are observed in the cases of iceland norway and atlantic canada result from the different configurations of political power and political structure within each case while the empirical discussion is focused upon property rights and fisheries the theoretical discussion of bargaining and uncertainty has widespread application across comparative and international politics

the international politics of harmonization the case of capital market regulation the internationalization and globalization of capital markets greatly complicates the tasks of national financial regulators it is becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible to regulate the activities of banking and securities firms and the broad range of transactions in which they engage on a national level in this article i explore the process of international regulatory harmonization in capital markets focusing especially on the mechanisms political pressure market pressure and institutional arrangements that facilitate this process i argue that the united states and the united kingdom are dominant players in the capital market and that the factors most relevant for understanding harmonization processes are 1 whether other jurisdictions have incentives to emulate the regulatory innovations of the dominant financial centers and 2 whether the dominant centers experience negative externalities in the process these two factors shed considerable light on whether harmonization will be spurred primarily by market forces or by politics they also suggest the likely role of international institutions in the process of regulatory harmonization the argument is illustrated using four issue areas capital adequacy requirements for banks anti money laundering rules accounting standards and information sharing among securities regulators

power control and the logic of substitution in institutional design the case of international climate finance how do powerful states control international organizations ios in contrast to the conventional wisdom that treats weighted voting rules as the primary means that powerful states use to codify their asymmetric control in institutional design we propose that funding rules are equally important our framework develops a logic of substitution whereby permissive earmark rules that allow donors to stipulate how their contributions to an io are used are a design substitute for weighted voting from wealthy states perspective whether asymmetric control is incorporated in design through voting or funding rules depends on whether egalitarian norms emphasizing political and legal equality or shareholder norms emphasizing influence commensurate with financial power govern voting and representation rights at the io focusing on the domain of climate finance we demonstrate that weighted voting rules are used at international climate finance institutions icfis associated with multilateral development banks but that wealthy states pursued permissive earmark rules at icfis within the united nations system where egalitarian norms are strong in this way powerful donors can exert control over resource allocation even when developing states appear to hold equal influence on governing bodies in addition to providing a reassessment of how power translates into control at ios our framework offers insight into forum shopping behavior and sheds light on substitution dynamics that involve other dimensions of design across a range of issue areas

modeling the forms of international cooperation distribution versus information the problems of distribution and information impede international cooperation they arise when actors select how they will cooperate an exploration of the interaction between these problems using a limited information model of cooperation leads to six conclusions first leadership solutions to coordination problems always exist but leadership here is very different from hegemonic provision of public goods second actors can cooperate in the face of anarchy even without a shadow of the future third diffuse reciprocal strategies arise naturally in coordination problems fourth norms and institutions are intertwined within successful cooperation fifth the form of cooperation on an issue varies with the relative importance of distribution and information finally and most important distributional and informational problems interfere with each other arrangements to cooperate can successfully address one but not both of these problems

willingness to pay for energy saving measures in residential buildings this paper uses a choice experiment to evaluate the consumers willingness to pay for energy saving measures in switzerland s residential buildings these measures include air renewal ventilation systems and insulation of windows and facades two groups of respondents consisting respectively of 163 apartment tenants and 142 house owners were asked to choose between their housing status quo and each one of the several hypothetical situations with different attributes and prices the estimation method is based on a fixed effects logit model the results suggest that the benefits of the energy saving attributes are significantly valued by the consumers these benefits include both individual energy savings and environmental benefits as well as comfort benefits namely thermal comfort air quality and noise protection

inequality does cause underdevelopment insights from a new instrument consistent with the provocative hypothesis of engerman and sokoloff 1997 2000 this paper confirms with cross country data that agricultural endowments predict inequality and inequality predicts development the use of agricultural endowments specifically the abundance of land suitable for growing wheat relative to that suitable for growing sugarcane as an instrument for inequality is this paper s approach to problems of measurement and endogeneity of inequality the paper finds inequality also affects other development outcomes institutions and schooling which the literature has emphasized as mechanisms by which higher inequality lowers per capita income it tests the inequality hypothesis for development institutional quality and schooling against other recent hypotheses in the literature while finding some evidence consistent with other development fundamentals the paper finds high inequality to independently be a large and statistically significant barrier to prosperity good quality institutions and high schooling

global communications and national power life on the pareto frontier regime analysis has focused on issues of market failure the resolution of which depends upon knowledge and institution building global communications regimes however have been concerned either with issues of pure coordination or with coordination problems with distributional consequences outcomes have been decided by the underlying distribution of national power in those areas where power was asymmetrically distributed and there was no agreement on basic principles and norms radio broadcasting and remote sensing no regime was formed in those areas where distributional issues could not be unilaterally resolved allocation of the radio spectrum and telecommunications regimes were created although both principles and rules changed with alterations in national power capabilities

information and effort in contingent valuation surveys application to global climate change using national internet samples this contingent valuation study investigates the issues of information access and respondent effort and is based on a series of national internet samples the focus is on a split sample treatment basic information bi versus enhanced information ei in the latter significantly expanded information is provided about global climate change and the kyoto protocol using a referendum format we compare the treatment effect bi versus ei on willingness to pay wtp we develop measures of respondent effort in accessing optional information through the technology of web based surveys and jointly model effort and wtp using a simultaneous estimation approach results support the use of the joint modeling approach for objective measures of respondent effort and wtp respondent effort is shown to be positively and significantly related to wtp however use of the optional menu is rather modest counts of pages and time spent and is highly variable both across pages and respondents

the politics of dispute settlement design explaining legalism in regional trade pacts dispute settlement mechanisms in international trade vary dramatically from one agreement to another some mechanisms are highly legalistic with standing tribunals that resemble national courts in their powers and procedures others are diplomatic requiring only that the disputing countries make a good faith effort to resolve their differences through consultations in this article i seek to account for the tremendous variation in institutional design across a set of more than sixty post 1957 regional trade pacts in contrast to accounts that emphasize the transaction costs of collective action or the functional requirements of deep integration i find that the level of legalism in each agreement is strongly related to the level of economic asymmetry in interaction with the proposed depth of liberalization among member countries

the injustice of inequality in many countries the operation of legal political and regulatory institutions is subverted by the wealthy and the politically powerful for their own benefit this subversion takes the form of corruption intimidation and other forms of influence we present a model of such institutional subversion focusing specifically on courts and of the effects of inequality in economic and political resources on the magnitude of subversion we then use the model to analyze the consequences of institutional subversion for the law and order environment in the country as well as for capital accumulation and growth we illustrate the model with historical evidence from gilded age united states and the transition economies of the 1990s we also present some cross country evidence consistent with the basic prediction of the model

coordination versus prisoners dilemma implications for international cooperation and regimes the study of political institutions in general and international cooperation in particular has been beneficially influenced by the prisoners dilemma pd game model but there is a mistaken tendency to treat pd as representing the singular problem of collective action and cooperation by relaxing the assumptions of 2 2 games and developing an alternate model of the coordination game i show how some cooperation problems have very different properties from those found in pd the analytical results of the two games are compared across several important dimensions number of strategies available number of iterations of the game numbers of players and the distribution of power among them the discussion is illustrated with specific problems of international cooperation and the implications of alternative cooperation problems for the formation and performance of international regimes are explored the basic solutions for pd and coordination have divergent ramifications for the institutionalization stability and adaptability of regimes and for the role of hegemony in the international system however the coordination model does not replace the pd model but complements and supplements it as a way to understand the diversity of political institutions these results are widely applicable to areas of politics beyond international relations

model selection and misspecification in discrete choice welfare analysis this study extends the work by herriges and kling 1997 to further evaluate the impact of discrete choice modelling techniques on welfare measures particularly we evaluate the performance of the increasingly popular mixed logit model and the computational strategy for deriving discrete choice welfare measures our simulation results show that model misspecification can have profound effects on welfare measures in general the flexible mixed logit model performs relatively well in the presence of misspecification however when the nesting structure can be appropriately identified via statistical tests and a priori knowledge experience the nested logit model provides more reliable welfare measures than the mixed logit model

the state of the art of environmental valuation with discrete choice experiments abstract this paper provides with a review of the state of the art of environmental valuation with discrete choice experiments dces the growing body of literature on this field serves to emphasize the increasing role that dces are playing in environmental decision making in the last decade the paper attempts to cover the full process of undertaking a choice experiment including survey and experimental design econometric analysis of choice data and welfare analysis the research on this field is found to be intense although many challenges are put forward e g choice task complexity and cognitive effort experimental design preference and scale heterogeneity endogeneity or model uncertainty reviewing the state of the art of dces serves to draw attention to the main challenges that this methodological approach will need to overcome in the coming years and to identify the frontiers in discrete choice analysis

international regimes and alliance behavior explaining nato conventional force levels with the end of the cold war the military posture of the north atlantic treaty organization nato has entered a period of profound change prior to the recent dramatic political events in europe however nato conventional force levels in the central region had been remarkably stable for some three decades this article seeks to explain this record of stability in terms of three widely used theories of international relations it argues that balance of power theory and public goods theory cannot alone provide a satisfactory account rather these traditional approaches for understanding alliance behavior must be supplemented by regime theory which emphasizes the constraining effects of enduring institutional factors even in the face of structural change specifically it shows how an international regime has influenced the provision of conventional forces in the central region by alliance members more generally this analysis seeks to contribute to the literature on international regimes in three ways first it demonstrates that regimes do matter by providing an example of their importance for explaining state behavior and international outcomes second it extends regime theory to relations among military allies third it elaborates a comprehensive model for understanding why states actually comply with regime injunctions the model stresses both the ways in which regimes effectively modify the international environment within which states operate altering the costs and benefits associated with different courses of action and the ways in which participating states may internalize regime norms and rules thereby making compliance increasingly automatic

supplier choice and wtp for electricity attributes in an emerging market the role of perceived past experience environmental concern and energy saving behavior abstract this study analyzes customers preferences and their willingness to pay wtp for certain service attributes in an electricity supplier choice context specifically a stated preference choice experiment is conducted in the canary islands residential market where limited competition exists preferences for different electricity suppliers and three level of service attributes are investigated namely supply reliability share of renewable energies and availability of a complementary energy audit service the results might be interpreted as an indication of different aspects new firms need to consider if they plan to enter in the market there is an opportunity for new companies to establish in the market though evidence of brand loyalty to the current company and or significant switching costs are also found especially in the case of older people regarding the estimated wtp several results should be highlighted first customers who have experienced more serious outages in the past tend to show a higher wtp to reduce the outage frequency second highly educated respondents those who state a great concern for the greenhouse gases ghg emissions and those who carry out energy saving actions in their homes exhibit a larger wtp for renewable energies this empirical evidence provides useful information for authorities responsible for energy policy design

the fourth wave of democracy and dictatorship noncooperative transitions in the postcommunist world the transition from communism in europe and the former soviet union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy since the crumbling of the berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the soviet union in 1991 most of the twenty eight new states have abandoned communism but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies the remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated transitional regimes this article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule in endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien regime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule in countries with asymmetrical balances of power the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful in countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage democracy emerged conversely in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage dictatorship emerged in between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal rather than producing stalemate compromise and parted transitions to democracy however such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers the regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated unstable partial democracies

the devil is in the details household electricity saving behavior and the role of information abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyze swedish households willingness to increase their daily efforts to save electricity the analysis builds on a broad theoretical framework which embraces both economic and norm based motivations in explaining household behavior the paper pays particular attention to the role of information about the availability of different behavioral changes that can be undertaken at the household level the empirical results are based on a postal survey that was sent out to 1200 swedish households and the econometric analysis is carried out within a so called ordered probit framework our results indicate that costs environmental attitudes and social interactions are all important determinants of electricity saving activities within swedish households we tested the hypothesis that information about available savings measures that is presented in a more concrete and specific way is more likely to affect stated behavior than is more general information and the data collected support this notion the paper ends by discussing some implications of these results for the design of future informative policy measures in the energy efficiency field

the influence of green building certification schemes on real estate investor behaviour evidence from singapore based on an adaptive choice based conjoint analysis the aim of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which various characteristics of a condominium unit and in particular the building and cons

valuing climate protection through willingness to pay for biomass ethanol abstract this study uses a multi part split sample contingent valuation method cvm and fair share fs survey to better understand the public s valuation of mitigating global climate change through its willingness to pay for biomass or cellulosic ethanol in addition to a basic cvm question a related scenario was developed that asked half of the survey respondents to state their fair share cost to lessen a potential food shortage in the next decade also through the expanded use of cellulosic ethanol three alternative biomass feedstocks were assessed farming residues forestry residues and paper mill wastes and municipal solid wastes overall a slightly larger proportion of respondents were wtp extra for cellulosic ethanol in the basic cvm scenario than in the fs scenario though no significant differences were found in the wtp for the different feedstocks bid curve lognormal regression results for the two models were similar supporting the idea that asking a fs rather than a conventional wtp question may be justifiable in some circumstances such as in cases of a national emergency

the relative gains problem for international cooperation modern realism claims that the fear that others will enjoy relatively greater benefits frequently impedes international cooperation recent articles in this review by duncan snidal and robert powell modeled conditions under which the impact of relative gains varied joseph grieco criticizes snidal s model as based on assumptions that allow him to avoid rather than confront the realist arguments he also argues that powell s model while constructive ignores important additional sources of sensitivity to relative gains in response powell discusses the value of alternative assumptions about preferences and constraints in international relations snidal defends his analysis and presents an additional proof to support the independence of his central result the diminishing impact of relative gains with increasing numbers of states from assumptions of concern to grieco both responders emphasize their work as contributing to a contextually rich theory of international politics that builds on elements of both realism and neo liberalism

income inequality and the taste for revolution abstract although property rights are the cornerstone of market economies throughout history existing claims have been frequently overturned by revolutions one unsettled question is whether income inequality affects the likelihood of revolt this paper takes an approach different from previous studies by introducing data derived from two surveys of revolutionary preferences across a quarter million randomly sampled individuals more people are found to have a preference for revolt when inequality in their nation is high a 1 standard deviation increase in the gini coefficient explains up to 38 percent of the standard deviation in revolutionary support the results hold after controlling for a set of personal characteristics and country and year fixed effects since higher levels of income are found to have a negative impact on the taste for revolt the results suggest that either going for growth or implementing policies that reduce inequality can buy off those individuals with revolutionary preferences

estimating energy conservation patterns of greek households abstract this paper develops an empirical model to investigate the main determinants of household energy conservation patterns in greece employing cross section data in the empirical analysis household energy conserving choices models are employed using a discrete and a latent trait variable respectively as a dependent variable the results show that socio economic variables such as consumers income and family size are suitable to explain differences towards energy conservation preferences in addition the results suggest that electricity expenditures and age of the respondent are negatively associated with the number of energy conserving actions that a consumer is willing to adopt finally other variables such as environmental information feedback and consciousness of energy problems are characteristics of the energy saver consumer by evaluating consumer s decision making process with regards to energy conservation measures we are able to formulate and propose an effective energy conservation framework for greece an energy policy framework is among the main prerequisites not only to achieve sustainable development but also to maintain consumers quality of life

modelling decisions on energy efficient renovations a review the buildings sector accounts for more than 30 of global greenhouse gas emissions despite the well known economic viability of many energy efficient renovation measures which offer great potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting climate protection targets there is a relatively low level of implementation we performed a citation network analysis in order to identify papers at the research front and intellectual base on energy efficient renovation in four areas technical options understanding decisions incentive instruments and models and simulation the literature was reviewed in order to understand what is needed to sufficiently increase the number of domestic energy efficient renovations and to identify potential research gaps our findings show that the literature on energy efficient renovation gained considerable momentum in the last decade but lacks a deep understanding of the uncertainties surrounding economic aspects and non economic factors driving renovation decisions of homeowners the analysis indicates that the socio economic energy saving potential and profitability of energy efficient renovation measures is lower than generally expected it is suggested that this can be accounted for by the failure to understand and consider the underpinning influences of energy consuming behaviour in calculations homeowners decisions to renovate are shaped by an alliance of economic and non economic goals therefore existing incentives typically targeting the economic viability of measures have brought little success a deeper understanding of the decisions of homeowners is needed and we suggest that a simulation model which maps the decision making processes of homeowners may result in refining existing instruments or developing new innovative mechanisms to tackle the situation

negotiation arithmetic adding and subtracting issues and parties students of international negotiations often examine strategic interactions among a given set of parties dealing with a specified group of issues the issues and parties themselves are often choice variables whose ultimate configuration can have decisive effects on a bargain s outcome using a variety of international cases i investigate the properties of several classes of moves that are intended to alter the issues and parties of an original negotiation a unified approach to the analysis of such situations suggests numerous distinct means by which the addition or subtraction of issues can yield one sided gains to the use of power can yield joint gains that create or enhance a zone of possible agreement and can reduce or destroy a zone of possible agreement the effects of adding or subtracting parties are similarly analyzed however unintended complexity unforeseen interrelationships organizational considerations transactions costs and informational requirements may alter the analysis of such moves

redistributive cooperation market failure wealth transfers and the basle accord indecember1987 policymakersbelongingtothegroupoften g 10 signeda far reaching agreement on international nancial regulation the basle accord ontheinternational convergence of capital measuresand capital standards underthetermsof thisagreement g 10 policymakersimplemented uniform risk based capitalrequirements on commercial banks the origins of the basle accord according tokapstein lay in the consequencesof international nancial integration international nancial integration by raising systemic risk and eroding regulators capacity toensure the soundness of national banking systems generated a market failure evi denced by thedebt crisis commercial bankshad accepted ariskier portfolioofloansthan society considered optimal and were now unwilling to bear the full costs of thislending behavior financial market failurecreated a demand for international regula tiontowhichpolicymakersrespondedby supplying thebasleaccord to theextentthat the payments system had the characterof apublic good it wasreasonable to askevery state to contribute to its maintenance bank supervisors responded to theneed for greater oversight by negotiating the basleaccord

the effects of structures and power on state bargaining strategies when and why will states adopt more or less cooperative bargaining strategies standard answers to this question focus on the role of state power other scholars highlight socialization effects i argue that in most international negotiations the institutional bargaining structure will mitigate the effects of power and socialization and drive state bargaining behavior factors highlighted by formal models of international bargaining should therefore best explain the variation in the strategies states adopt i introduce empirical measures of these abstract concepts and test their effects against those of power and socialization using an original dataset of state bargaining strategies in the european union eu the results show that structural factors best explain variation in the eu states bargaining strategies i conclude by highlighting the conditions under which these effects should explain state bargaining behavior in other international negotiations and discuss the implications of this argument for the study of international bargaining

are uniform solutions focal the case of international environmental agreements the application of uniform solutions has several drawbacks notably their lack of cost efficiency and their inability to guarantee individual rationality a proper specification of uniform solutions however reveals that uniform solutions that satisfy individual rationality always exist when all countries hold private information about their own reduction costs there only exists one solution that always satisfies individually rationality without use of side payments and the requirement of dominant strategy implementation the solution that selects the smallest individually preferred uniform reduction which also give a theoretical explanation of the lowest common denominator effect

the effect of international environmental institutions how we might learn more analysts of international politics can measure and explain the effect of international environmental institutions on the behavior of states and other actors and on the natural environment in three steps first we measure the outcome to be explained in terms of goal attainment defined as the difference over time or across cases between actor behavior or the state of the natural environment on dimensions identified by institutional goals and certain end points determined by institutional goals second we assess the effect of an institution in terms of the extent to which the existence or operation of the institution contributes ceteris paribus to variation in goal attainment we transform these two variables into a score of institutional effectiveness to indicate the degree to which institutions contribute to the resolution of the environmental problems that motivate their establishment third we analyze the relationship between institutional effectiveness and specific dimensions of institutional design such as decision making rules membership and access conditions and the compliance system

loosening the ties that bind a learning model of agreement flexibility how can states credibly make and keep agreements when they are uncertain about the distributional implications of their cooperation they can do so by incorporating the proper degree of flexibility into their agreements i develop a formal model in which an agreement characterized by uncertainty may be renegotiated to incorporate new information the uncertainty is related to the division of gains under the agreement with the parties resolving this uncertainty over time as they gain experience with the agreement the greater the agreement uncertainty the more likely states will want to limit the duration of the agreement and incorporate renegotiation working against renegotiation is noise that is variation in outcomes not resulting from the agreement the greater the noise the more difficult it is to learn how an agreement is actually working hence incorporating limited duration and renegotiation provisions becomes less valuable in a detailed case study i demonstrate that the form of uncertainty in my model corresponds to that experienced by the parties to the nuclear non proliferation treaty who adopted the solution my model predicts

income inequality redistribution and domestic terrorism abstract we analyze the effect of income inequality on terrorism for a sample of 113 countries between 1984 and 2012 we provide evidence robust to various methodological changes e g the use of instrumental variable approaches that higher levels of income inequality are associated with more domestic terrorism analyzing the underlying transmission channels we find that this effect is in parts due to the ill effects of income inequality on institutional outcomes e g corruption which in turn motivate domestic terrorism we also investigate whether redistributional efforts can be effective in reducing terrorist activity we find that countries that redistribute more see less domestic terrorism in parts because redistribution improves institutional conditions in light of this latter finding we discuss the implications of our analysis for policymakers who want to counter domestic terrorism through redistributive policies

assessing the potential demand for biofuel by combining economics and psychology a focus on proximity applied to jatropha oil in africa abstract bio energy demand is known to be influenced by geographical origin and social equity this paper aims to highlight the influence of the proximity between biomass production and energy consumption on the demand for alternative bio fuels in the context of burkina faso we explore potential demand for jatropha oil jatropha curcas as a diesel substitute among engine owners survey data are based on a between groups design one group of respondents experiencing a local supply chain while the other a global one results show that proximity has a significant effect on potential demand itself and on the formation and strength of beliefs regarding jatropha oil in a local supply chain context the demand is superior and seems to be guided more by a certain economic and technical rationality conversely the prospect of a jatropha oil produced outside the village restrains demand and this latter is more determined by contextual factors and social interaction our analysis confirms that demand does not only depend on technical and economic factors such as price but also on the integration of the biomass production and processing in the socioeconomic life of local rural populations understanding demand construction and assessing underlying beliefs are key success factors for bio energy projects