A principal provides budgets to agents (e.g., divisions of a firm or the principal's children) whose expenditures provide her benefits, either materially or because of altruism. Only agents know their potential to generate benefits. We prove that if the more "productive" agents are also more...

We develop and apply a new method for estimating the economic benefits of an environmental amenity. The method fits within the household production framework (Becker 1965), and is based upon the notion of estimating the derived demand for a privately traded option to utilize a freely-available...

Economists have expended considerable effort to develop economically meaningful definitions of the somewhat elusive concept of "sustainability." We relate such a definition of sustainability to well known concepts from neoclassical economics, in particular, potential Pareto improvements (in the...

A principal provides budgets to agents (e.g., divisions of a firm or the principal's children) whose expenditures provide her benefits, either materially or because of altruism. Only agents know their potential to generate benefits. We prove that if the more "productive" agents are also more...