Essays in the economics and political economy of climate change

Empirical research on anthropogenic climate change is constrained by two fundamental facts: climate change is unprecedented and its impacts occur gradually. This implies that neither evidence from recent history nor the near future can directly inform policy. Under such circumstances, empirical research must find historical analogs capturing particular features of future climate change and policy, which, combined with theory, can provide credible out-of-sample predictions. The four papers in this dissertation use new data settings and methodologies to causally examine central questions related to climate change mitigation, adaptation, innovation, and impacts. Results from these papers can help inform future climate-related research and various issues regarding the political economy of climate policy

Three-particle bound states in a finite volume: unequal masses and higher partial waves

An explicit expression for the finite-volume energy shift of shallow three-body bound states for non-identical particles is obtained in the unitary limit. The inclusion of the higher partial waves is considered. To this end, the method of arXiv:1412.4969 (Mei{\ss}ner et al.) is generalized for the case of unequal masses and arbitrary angular momenta. It is shown that in the S-wave and in the equal mass limit, the result from arXiv:1412.4969 is reproduced.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur

Volume Dependence of Spectral Weights for Unstable Particles in a Solvable Model

Volume dependence of the spectral weight is usually used as a simple criteria to distinguish single-particle states from multi-particle states in lattice QCD calculations. Within a solvable model, the Lee model, we show that this criteria is in principle only valid for a stable particle or a narrow resonance. If the resonance being studied is broad, then the volume dependence of the corresponding spectral weight resembles that of a multi-particle state instead of a single-particle one. For an unstable $V$-particle in the Lee model, the transition from single-particle to multi-particle volume dependence is governed by the ratio of its physical width to the typical level spacing in the finite volume. We estimate this ratio for practical lattice QCD simulations and find that, for most cases, the resonance studied in lattice QCD simulations still resembles the single particle behavior.Comment: 15 pages, no figures. Title modified. Version to appear on Phys. Rev.

Sediment and Organisms as Marker for Metal Pollution

Pollution caused by metal elements has drawn increasing attention worldwide due to the increase of anthropogenic contaminants to the marine ecosystems. Pollution of the natural environment by metals is a serious problem because these elements are indestructible and most of them have toxic effects on living organisms, when they exceed a certain concentration. Sediments are widely used as geo-marker for monitoring and identifying the possible sources since sediment can act as sink for the pollutants. Most metals are bound in fine-grain fraction because of its high surface area-to-grain size ratio where they have a greater biological availability compared to those in larger fraction. Lying in the second trophic level in the aquatic ecosystem, shellfish species have long been known to accumulate both essential and non-essential metals. Many researchers have reported the potentiality of using mollusks, especially mussel and oyster species, as bioindicators or biomarkers for monitoring the metal contamination of the aquatic system