We consider an n-person economy in which efficiency is independent of distribution but the cardinal properties of the agents’ utility functions preclude transferable utility (a property we call "Almost TU"). We show that Almost TU is a necessary and sufficient condition for all agents to...

Due to meteorological factors, the distribution of the environmental damage due to climate change bears no relationship to that of global emissions. We argue in favor of offsetting this discrepancy, and propose a “global insurance scheme” to be financed according to countries’...

The recent literature on cost allocation lacks consensus on what is an appropriate definition of the consistency axiom. We take this as evidence that a careful reexamination is necessary. The starting point of our critique is the widely adopted definition proposed in Moulin and Shenker (1994),...

Fixed-path methods (FPMs) were introduced to manage situations where several individuals jointly operate a single technology (see [4]). In the production context, they consist in allocating marginal increments of output according to a proportions vector which changes along an arbitrary path....

We reexamine the consistency axiom in bankruptcy problems and propose arguments in favor of an alternative definition of a reduced problem. The classical definition updates the size of the estate while keeping agents' claims unaffected. Instead, we suggest updating agents' claims along with the...

The siting of public facilities, such as prisons, airports or incinerators for hazardous wastes faces social rejection by local population. These public goods have a private bad aspect which creates a siting problem: all communities benefit from its existence, but only one (the host) bears its...

Choosing a project for which benefits accrue to all involved agents but brings major costs or additional benefits to only one agent is often problematic. Siting a nationwide nuclear waste disposal or hosting a major sporting event are examples of such a problem: costs or benefits are tied to the...

We propose a novel methodology for forecasting chaotic systems which is based on the nearest-neighbor predictor and improves upon it by incorporating local Lyapunov exponents to correct for its inevitable bias. Using simulated data, we show that gains in prediction accuracy can be substantial....

Most natural commons are subject to discontinuities and threshold effects, so their gradual depletion may result in a sudden irreversible loss of the associated ecological services. Yet, it is often impossible to locate these thresholds with certainty. We analyze this context using a variant of...