We assess the monetary value of the noise damage, caused by aircraft noise nuisance around Amsterdam Airport, as the sum of hedonic house price differentials and a residual cost component. The residual costs are assessed from a survey, including an ordinal life satisfaction scale, on which...

This paper has a twofold objective. First, we develop a new method to assess the monetary value for individuals of external effects. The method makes use of an ordinal index of life satisfaction as scored by individual respondents who are subjected in varying intensity to the external effect....

In this paper we discuss experimental evidence for two different institutional approaches to a possible resolution of the fundamental conflict between social welfare maximization and individual utility maximization. The basic workhorse for modelling this conflict is the voluntary contribution of...

In this paper we argue that authorities aid cooperation by means of direct coordination or the enforcement of re-commitment devices such as contract laws.Credible threats of violence allow this role. In a local interaction model, an authority forms if mutually connected individuals with...

This paper analyses the adoption of energy-efficiency enhancing technologies by heterogeneous firms. The fact that energy use does not only cause external environmental costs through pollution, but also directly affects the profitability of the firm and hence its behaviour on input and output...

We study road supply by competing firms between a single origin and destination. In previous studies, firms simultaneously set their tolls and capacities while taking the actions of the others as given in a Nash fashion. Then, under some widely used technical assumptions, firms set a...

Sunday shop opening is deregulated to the municipal level in the Netherlands. Despite positive effects on economic growth and employment, many municipalities restrict Sunday shop opening. Based on 2003 data we show that diverse local characteristics, like the size of municipalities and religious...

We study electoral competition among politicians who are heterogeneous both in competence and in how much they care about (what they perceive as) the public interest relative to the private rents from being in office. We show that politicians may have stronger incentives to behave...

We present a dynamic model of the interaction between interest groups and policymakers, featuring endogenous interest group formation. We show that complicated dynamic patterns in economic policies may arise once interest group formation is taken into account. <BR><BR>