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Adaptation to Climate Change in Preindustrial Iceland

American Economic Review 2012 102(3), 250-255
We investigate the effect of climate change on population growth in 18th and 19th century Iceland. We find that annual temperature changes help determine the population growth rate in pre-industrial Iceland: a year 1 degree Celsius cooler than average drives down population growth rates by 1.14%. We also find that 18th and 19th century Icelanders adapt to prolonged changes in climate after 20 years. These adaptations reduce the short run effect of annual change in temperature by about 60%. Finally, a 1 degree Celsius sustained decrease in temperature decreases the steady state population by 10% to 26%.

Meetings with Costly Participation: Reply

American Economic Review 2005 95(4), 1351-1354
This note corrects an error in an example in Meetings with Costly Participation (AER 90(4), 927-943). It characterizes the set of equilibria for the example under the assumptions in the paper, shows that in all the equilibria an interval of moderate po- sitions is devoid of participants, and provides assumptions under which the result as originally stated is correct.

Meetings with Costly Participation

American Economic Review 2000 90(4), 927-943
We study a collective decision-making process in which people interested in an issue may participate, at a cost, in a meeting, and the resulting decision is a compromise among the participants' preferences. We show that the equilibrium number of participants is small and their positions are extreme, and when the compromise is the median, the outcome is likely to be random. The model and its equilibria are consistent with evidence on the procedures and outcomes of U.S. regulatory hearings.