This paper answers fundamental questions that have preoccupied modern economic thought since the 18th century. What is the aggregate real rate of return in the economy? Is it higher than the growth rate of the economy and, if so, by how much? Is there a tendency for returns to fall in the...

We consider environmental regulation in a context where firms invest in abatement technology under conditions of uncertainty about subsequent abatement cost, but can subsequently adjust output in the light of true marginal abatement cost. Where an emission tax is the only available instrument,...

The paper combines an economic-geography model of agglomeration and periphery with a model of species diversity and looks at optimal policies of biodiversity conservation. The subject of the paper is natural biodiversity, which is inevitably impaired by anthropogenic impact. Thus, the economic...

The literature on indirect tax reforms in pollution-ridden economies is quite limited. This paper, using a model of a small open economy with production and consumption generated pollution, considers the welfare implications of tax reforms within an integrated structure of consumption and...

Economic models of climate policy (or policies to combat other environmental problems) typically neglect psychological adaptation to changing life circumstances. People may adapt or become more sensitive, to different degrees, to a deteriorated environment. The present paper addresses these...

A central issue in the study of sustainable development is the interplay of growth and sacrifice in a dynamic economy. This paper investigates the relationship among current consumption, sacrifice, and sustainability improvement in a general context and in two canonical, stylized economies. We...

This paper extends the classical exhaustible-resource/stock-pollution model with the irreversibility of pollution decay. Within this framework, we answer the question how the potential irreversibility of pollution affects the extraction path. We investigate the conditions under which the economy...