We evaluate biodiversity in a real options framework, when the resources in use are substitutable. We examine optimal conservation decisions given that a biodiversity loss is irreversible and that future use values are uncertain. While species substitutability is generally believed to reduce the...

We evaluate biodiversity in a real options framework, when the resources in use are substitutable. We examine optimal conservation decisions given that a biodiversity loss is irreversible and that future use values are uncertain. While species substitutability is generally believed to reduce the...

We present a dynamic model of factor demands based on expected discounted costs min-imization. While making only very mild assumptions on expectations and technology, we are able to establish a duality relationship between contemporary factor demands and the technology, and we provide formula...

Forests emit and absorb carbon. Although the portion of anthropic climate change that can be attributed to forestry activities and land use is small relative to the contribution of fossil fuels consumption, it is by no mean negligible. The role that the forest may play as a sink or a source of...

Using nonparametric estimation techniques adapted from Guerre et al. [2000], we infer cost distributions and informational rents, from 666 snow removal contracts offered for tender by the City of Montreal. Our results are compatible with standard received theory of competitive auctions: there is...

This paper revisits the tragedy of the commons when agents have different capabilities in both production and encroachment activities, and can allocate their time between them. Under fairly general assumptions on production and encroachment technologies, an individual's expected income is convex...

Neoclassical economists often praise the market as an institution allowing efficient, decentralized, decision making. In their analyses, which lead to the theorems of welfare, the cost of such institutions that allow markets to operate is usually ignored. One major such institution is the...

We survey and synthetize the literature on the measurement of technical progress by the method of Divisia. The approach is first presented under a number of crucial simplifying assumptions. Then we relax those assumptions to allow for non constant returns, the presence of quasi-fix factors of...

This papers aims to determine the optimal rotation and the best alternative use of a forest stand when wood price is assumed to follow a Geometrical Brownian Motion and the externality generated by the forest capacity to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the air is adequately taken into...

In this paper, we study a particular uneven-aged forest stand management pattern that is often advocated in practice. The forest structure under consideration is similar to a normalized forest à la Faustmann, with the following difference: rather than being single aged, each forest tract...