Valuing ecosystem services with microeconomic underpinnings presents challenges because these services typically constitute nonmarket values and contribute to human welfare indirectly through a series of ecological pathways that are dynamic, nonlinear, and difficult to quantify and link to...

Given disparate beliefs about economic growth, technical change and damage caused by climate change, this paper starts with the seeming impossibility of determining a unique time profile of the social costs of carbon as a benchmark for climate negotiations and for infrastructure decisions that...

This paper presents a fairly general treatment of recursive infinite horizon forward looking optimizing systems on infinite dimensional spatial domains. It includes optimal control, an analysis of local stability of spatially flat optimal steady states and development of techniques to compute...

This paper presents an optimal control model to analyze reforestations with two different species, including commercial values, carbon sequestration and biodiversity or scenic values. We solve the model qualitatively with general functions and discuss the implications of partial or total...

We consider an optimal consumption and pollution problem that has two important features. Environmental damages due to economic activities may be irreversible and the level at which the degradation becomes irreversible is unknown. Particular attention is paid to the situation where agents are...

Using a dynamic model of the control of an infectious disease, we derive the conditions under which eradication will be optimal. When eradication is feasible, the optimal program requires either a low vaccination rate or eradication. A high vaccination rate is never optimal. Under special...

This paper analyses the impact of population growth on CO2 emissions in European Union countries. Traditionally, researchers have assumed a unitary elasticity of emissions with respect to population growth. In this study population is treated as a predictor in the model, instead of being...

This paper analyzes the impact of urbanization on CO2 emissions in developing countries. In this study we treat population as a predictor in the model, instead of assuming a unitary elasticity of emissions with respect to population growth. We contribute to the existing literature by examining...