China is appraised to have the world's largest exploitable reserves of shale gas, although several legal, regulatory, environmental and investment-related issues will likely restrain its scope. China's capacity to successfully face these hurdles and produce commercial shale gas will have a...

The precautionary principle (PP) applied to environmental policy stipulates that, in the presence of physical uncertainty, society must take robust preventive action to guard against worst-case outcomes. It follows that the higher the degree of uncertainty, the more aggressive this preventive...

The benefits of smoothing demand peaks in the electricity market has been widely recognised. European countries such Spain and some of the Scandinavian countries have recently given to the consumers the possibility to face the spot prices instead of having a fixed tariffs determined by...

I study the coexistence of formal and informal finance in underdeveloped credit markets. Formal banks have access to unlimited funds but are unable to control the use of credit. Informal lenders can prevent non-diligent behavior but often lack the needed capital. The model implies that formal...

This study develops a model of water extraction with endogenous social norms. Many users are connected by a unique shared resource that can become scarce in case of over-exploitation. Preferences of individuals are guided by their extraction values and their taste for conformity to social norms...

In this essay, three separate yet interconnected components of pro-environmental decision making are considered: knowledge, in the form of basic scientific understanding and procedural knowledge, risk perception, as it relates to an individual’s direct experience of climate change and...

Capacity Remuneration Mechanisms (CRM) can be used in power markets to overtake marketfailures, reaching security of supply. However, investment in capacity is a dynamic process, thatdepends on the evolution of prices and costs overtime. In our paper we study the capacity remuneration value...

Uncertainty plays a key role in the economics of climate change, and the discussions surrounding its implications for climate policy are far from settled. We give an overview of the literature on uncertainty in integrated assessment models of climate change and identify some future research...

This paper proposes to investigate the impact of financialization on energy markets (oil, gas, coal and electricity European forward prices) during both normal times and extreme fluctuation periods through an original behavioral and emotional approach. To this aim, we propose a new theoretical...

Uncertainty about long-term climate policy is a major driving force in the evolution of the carbon market price. Since this price enters the investment decision process of regulated firms, this uncertainty increases the cost of capital for investors and might deter investments into new...