Uncertainty on effective stocks or damages is the core of most irreversible economic decisions involving natural resources and the environment and, more generally, of most investment decisions. The discussion on the relevance of the precautionary principle is illustrative of this role. Although...

The Arrow and Fisher [1974] model of environmental preservation with irreversibility and uncertainty is reconsidered in the perspective of the real option theory. Thanks to this approach, an extension of the model to the continuous time case with a partial exploitation of non renewable resources...