Banks should evaluate whether a borrower is likely to default. The author applies several techniques in the extensive mathematical literature of stochastic optimal control/dynamic programming to derive an optimal debt in an environment where there are risks on both the asset and liabilities...

The analysis of climate change is confronted with large uncertainties that need to be taken into account to arrive at meaningful policy recommendations. The main contribution of economics to this interdisciplinary task is to provide formal frameworks and techniques for analyzing climate policy...

There is a general agreement that (a) climate change is one of the most serious environmental problems, that (b) the analysis of climate change is confronted with a large degree of uncertainty and (c) that these uncertainties need to be taken into account to arrive at meaningful policy...

Abstract: The Renewable Energy Source Act (EEG) promotes German biogas production in order to substitute fossil fuels, protect the environment, and prevent climate change. As a consequence, green maize production has increased significantly over the last years, causing negative environmental...

The standard indicators used to compare cross-country innovation are in the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR). But there are problems with aggregation and response bias with these largely self-reported measures (Hollanders and van Cruysen, 2008). We propose a theory-based metric using Data...

Land use and land use change are determined as much by economic and institutional drivers as they depend on bio-physical conditions. Future pathways of socio-economic and environmental systems can only be assessed with scenarios which describe possible future paths of development. For this...

Traditionally, observed fluctuations in aggregate economic time series have been mainly modelled as being the result of exogenous disturbances. A better understanding of macroeconomic phenomena, however, surely requires looking directly at the relations between variables that may trigger...

The celebrated Taylor rule provides a simple formula that aims to capture how the central bank interest rate is adjusted as a linear function of inflation and output gap. However, the rule does not take explicitly into account the zero lower bound on the interest rate. Prior studies on interest...

A general theoretical and empirical framework is developed for assessing the potential of a vertically integrated firm to foreclose downstream competitors. Using this framework a policymaker may also evaluate the empirical welfare effects from a vertically integrated firm raising rivals' costs....

This paper estimates annual data on educational attainment for 3,076 mainland U.S. counties 1991 -- 2005. Being estimated without resorting to ancillary information, this data is suited particular well for panel regression analyses. Several plausibility checks indicate that the data is fairly...