The economics of electricity is shaped by its physics. A well know example is the non-storability of electricity that causes its price to fluctuate widely. More generally, physical constraints cause electricity to be a heterogeneous good along three dimensions - time, space, and lead-time....

That climate policies are costly is evident and therefore often creates major fears. But the alternative (no action) also has a cost. Mitigation costs and damages incurred depend on what the climate policies are; moreover, they are substitutes. This brings climate policies naturally in the realm...

This paper provides an assessment of the economic value of the oceanographic services provided by the Mediterranean operational forecasting system, MFSTEP. The main purpose of this exploratory study is to carry out a cost-benefit analysis for different development scenarios, by comparing the...

Environmental cost-benefit analysis (ECBA) refers to social evaluation of investment projects and policies that involve significant environmental impacts. Valuation of the environmental impacts in monetary terms forms one of the critical steps in ECBA. We propose a new approach for environmental...

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...

The income that wind and solar power receive on the market is affected by the variability of their output. At times of high availability of the primary energy source, they supply electricity at zero marginal costs, shift the supply curve (merit-order curve) to the right and thereby reduce the...

Most decisions concerning (self-)insurance and self-protection have to be taken in situations in which a) the effort exerted precedes the moment uncertainty realises, and b) the probabilities of future states of the world are not perfectly known. By integrating these two characteristics in a...

Energy and climate policies are usually seen as measures to internalize externalities. However, as a side effect, these policies redistribute wealth between consumers and producers, and within these groups. While redistribution is seldom the focus of the academic literature in energy economics,...

The analysis finds that in addition to U-shaped paths of environmental quality arising for growth in income per capita, growth in population can also produce socially efficient patterns that are U-shaped. Sufficient conditions for both types of paths are identified for a range of models and...

In this paper we use Pindyck’s model (2002) to show that the discount rate may play an important role in explaining for the income-pollution pattern observed in the real world. Low levels of income involve high values of discount rate, that are obstacles to the adoption of a pollution...