Common intuition and experimental psychology suggest that the ability to self-regulate, willpower, is a depletable resource. We investigate the behavior of an agent who optimally consumes a cake (or paycheck or workload) over time and who recognizes that restraining his consumption too much...

This paper clarifies issues debated by A.C. Pigou and Frank Knight about correcting inefficient use of congestible resources. Instead of government-imposed Pigouvian access fees, Knight favored access fees set by private toll-setters. For concreteness we use the original example of commuters...

We study a widely used ordering process (“Early Bird Discounts”) whereby a profit-maximizing manufacturer permits his dealers to place advance orders at a discount before they set retail prices. We show that such discounts may be used to shift just enough channel profits to dealers to enable...

In theory, how a fixed number of storable pollution permits are allocated in a cap-and-trade program should not affect intertemporal prices unless participants fail to receive permit endowments before they plan to use them. "Backloading" can create inefficiency; "frontloading" cannot. The...

We review the literature on bankable emission permits which has developed over the last two decades. Most articles analyze either theoretical or simulation models. The theoretical literature considers the problem of minimizing the discounted sum of social costs and the possibility of...

Previous analyses assumed that firms must surrender permits as they pollute. If so, then the price of permits may remain constant over measurable intervals if the government injects additional permits at a ceiling price or may even collapse if more permits are injected through an auction...

Efforts to limit cumulative emissions over the next century may be partially thwarted by the responses of fossil fuel suppliers. Current price-cost margins for major reserves are ample, leaving scope for significant price reductions if climate policies reduce demand for fossil fuels through...