This paper explores the outcome of an international environmental agreement when the governments are elected by their citizens. It also considers a voter's incentives for supporting candidates who are less green than she is. In the extreme case of ''global'' pollution, the elected politicians pay no attention to the environment, and the resulting international agreement is totally ineffective. Moreover, if governments cannot negotiate and have to decide noncooperatively (and voters are aware of this), the elected politicians can be greener, ecological damage can be lower and the median voter's payoff can be higher than in the case with bargaining.

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Brain drain, Human capital, Redistribution, Time-consistent policy, Credit market imperfections, F22, H2, I2,

This paper analyses the implications of international trade for non-cooperative environmental policy in the case of local production externalities. A particular focus is on the potential effects of regulations on the variety of goods and the resulting international spillover caused by trade. A tougher domestic standard negatively affects the utility of the households abroad, since such a policy reduces their variety of imports (due to fewer domestic product inventions) or their consumption of each imported brand (due to higher import prices). Ignoring the negative spillover, non-cooperative governments implement inefficiently strict standards in equilibrium. In contrast to this clear-cut inefficiency result, the impact of international trade on the state of the environment is ambiguous. Copyright Springer 2006environmental policy, international trade, monopolistic competition, open economies, process standards, Q28, F13, F12,

Developed countries increasingly compete for a pool of talented students from developing countries. This competition induces host countries to vertically di¤erentiate their education programmes: some countries supply a higher educational quality and charge higher tuition fees, while others provide a lower quality for lower tuition fees. This paper argues that the educational quality of high-quality countries, the national tuition fees and the quality and tuition fee di¤erentials between the countries all increase as the income prospects for graduates in the developing countries catch up with the developed world and the number of international students grows. If foreign students become more likely to stay in their host country after graduation, the implications will be more ambiguous. In particular, an increase in educational quality can be accompanied by a decline in tuition fees. Intensi…ed competition for international students does not necessarily disadvantage developing countries, since they might even bene…t from a brain gain.