During the past three decades, a vast body of literature has been produced on environmental economics. A very broad and crude classification of this literature would divide it into two categories: environmental regulation and valuation of environmental goods. The present research project focused on the first category. In particular, the project concentrated on the following comprehensive and to some extent overlapping themes (although not all the work fits into any of these categories):

• International environmental/climate agreements
• Endogenous technology development
• Dynamics and time consistency
• Limited rationality, altruism, and social interdependency of preferences

Additional research covered issues such as biodiversity, conservation, interjurisdictional competition for mobile foreign direct investment based on environmental standards, and economic-geography issues such as the geographical concentration of pollution due to the agglomeration of economic activities.

The scientific output from this project has been presented in a number of publications. Some of these publications were largely completed already before the CAS period started. For about 20 papers, a significant part of the work was done during the CAS period. Most of these publications are either in the review process or will be sent to international journals in the near future, although some have already been published in or accepted by international journals. Most of the work constitutes contributions to a large specialized body of literature on the topics studied. Accordingly, several of the results cannot be explained easily without an extensive summary of the relevant literature.

We plan to arrange a follow-up workshop in August 2007. In addition, to updating each other on ongoing work, project members will take advantage of this workshop to discuss possible additional cooperation between the CAS researchers (and other participants). There are already several joint research projects among the CAS researchers that started towards the end of the CAS period. To mention a few: Johan Eyckmans and Snorre Kverndokk are working together on two projects, ‘Can climate and development be reconciled?’ and ‘Moral motivation and climate agreements’; Reyer Gerlagh and Matti Liski are working together on ‘Imperfect observability of stocks, oil dependency, and technology adoption’; Michael Hoel and Aart de Zeeuw are working together on ‘Climate policy and R&D: Conventional versus breakthrough technologies’; and Michael Hoel and Matti Liski are working together on ‘Electricity markets with hydropower and imperfect competition’.

As mentioned above, almost all the research will be submitted to academic journals. We are considering the possibility of publishing some of the articles in a book after they have been published as articles. We have been in contact with the two publishers, Edward Elgar and Cambridge University Press. Nothing is decided yet, as we must first see when and in which journals the works will be published first. If we produce a book, it is likely to be published in 2008 based on work published in journals by the end of 2007.

My impression is that all the project members found the CAS project very productive and enjoyable. We were all fascinated by being in a small group with very homogeneous research interests and working closely together. Small informal seminars were invaluable for our work. We also all enjoyed the isolation from everyday chores and the focus on intellectual exchanges.