This paper considers a dynamic model of the evolution of open source software projects, focusing on the evolution of quality, contributing programmers, and users who contribute customer support to other users. Programmers who have used open source software are motivated by reciprocal altruism to...

Societies prohibit many transactions considered morally repugnant, although potentially efficiency-enhancing. We conducted an online choice experiment to characterize preferences for the morality and efficiency of payments to kidney donors. Preferences were heterogeneous, ranging from...

Recent environmental economics literature regarding global problems, like for example those associated with greenhouse gases, focuses on the emergence of international co-operation and underlying incentives. International co-operation among countries is necessary in the case of global pollution,...

In this paper, we use the two region CETA-M model to explore some related issues raised by the current interest in CO2 concentration targets as a possible climate change policy objective. First, we identify possible cost and benefit assumptions that would make particular concentration ceilings...

The literature of welfare-maximising greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies pays remarkably little attention to equity. This paper introduces three ways to consider efficiency and equity simultaneously. The first method, inspired by Kant and Rawls, maximises net present welfare, without...

We discuss the selection of the socially efficient discount rate for public investment projects that entail costs and benefits in the far distant future. We show that the discount rate should be a decreasing function of time horizon under some specific restrictions on the distribution of...

The standard framework in which economists evaluate environmental policies is cost-benefit analysis, so policy debates usually focus on the expected flows of costs and benefits, or on the choice of discount rate. But this can be misleading when there is uncertainty over future outcomes, when...

Rather than contributing to the proliferation of ad hoc environmental indicators and accounting systems this paper addresses the physical-monetary dichotomy in measuring the interactions between environment and economy by focusing on two systematic approaches which appear to become international...

Environmental cost-benefit analysis (ECBA) refers to social evaluation of investment projects and policies that involve significant environmental impacts. Valuation of the environmental impacts in monetary terms forms one of the critical steps in ECBA. We propose a new approach for environmental...