The purpose of this article is to examine the preservation of biodiversity as an economic problem. Using a very simple prototype model, we discuss how to include diversity in the objective function and how to develop a simple cost-benefit ranking criterion for ordering priorities. Then we...

For guidance in determining which items should be included in comprehensive NDP and how they should be included, reference is often made to the linearized Hamiltonian from an optimal growth problem. The paper gives a rigorous interpretation of this procedure in terms of a money-metric utility...

A critical problem, which has long plagued cost-benefit analysis, concerns the appropriate interest rate to use for discounting the future. This paper proposes a new approach to resolving the dilemma of the unknown discount rate, by incorporating the uncertainty directly into the analysis. An...

Based centrally on the economic concept of a cost function, an "economics proof" (by induction) is given of the supporting hyperplane.