Behavioral economics aims to provide more realistic psychological foundations for economic models. Experimental methods can contribute to this effort by providing the ability to identify causal processes and motivations that can be confounded in field settings. The essays in this dissertation...

[This item is a preserved copy. To view the original, visit http://econtheory.org/] The provision of public goods under asymmetric information has most oftenbeen viewed as a mechanism design problem under the aegis of an uninformedmediator. This paper focuses on institutional contexts without...

This paper considers the contacting approach to central banking in the context of a simple common agency model. The recent literature on optimal contracts suggests that the political principal of the central bank can design the appropriate incentive schemes that remedy for time-inconsistency...

Most considerations of knowledge management focus on corporations and, until recently, considered knowledge to be objective, stable, and asocial. In this paper we wish to move the focus away from corporations, and examine knowledge and national innovation systems. We argue that the knowledge...

The net neutrality debate has brought out economic rationale for andagainst a variety of proposals of the broadband service providers todifferentiate between different classes of users. Broadband users arecharacterized by the differing amounts of content they request online,as well as their...

Peak power demand issues have come to the fore recently because of the California electricity crisis. Uncertainties surrounding the reliability of electric power systems in restructured markets as well as security worries are the latest reasons for such concerns, but the issues surrounding peak...

Few developments are likely to affect human beings more profoundly in the long run than the discoveries resulting from advances in modern genetics. Although the developments in genetic technology promise to provide many additional benefits, their application to genetic screening poses ethical,...

In May 1995, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) released two proposals for restructuring the state`s electric power industry. The two proposals follow more than a year of testimony and public comment after the CPUC issued the ``Blue Book`` (CPUC 1994a) on April 20, 1994, which...

Gasification combined cycle continues to represent an important defining technology area for the forest products industry. The ''Forest Products Gasification Initiative'', organized under the Industry's Agenda 2020 technology vision and supported by the DOE ''Industries of the Future'' program,...

Renewable fuels standard (RFS) policies are becoming a popular public policy mechanism for developing the market for renewable fuels in the transportation sector. During the past decade, U.S. states and several countries began implementing these more market-based (less command and control)...