Chambers and Quiggin (2000) have used state-contingent production theory to establish important results concerning economic behaviour in the presence of uncertainty, including problems of consumer choice, the theory of the firm, and principal-agent relationships. Empirical application of the...

Polluting technologies can be represented using output distance functions. A common approach to estimating such functions is to factor out one of the outputs and estimate the resulting equation using well-known stochastic frontier estimation methods, including maximum likelihood. A problem with...

It is likely that climate change will be associated with reductions in inflows of water to the Murray–Darling Basin. In this study, we analyse the effects of climate change in the Murray–Darling Basin using a simulation model that incorporates a state-contingent representation of...

It is likely that climate change will be associated with reductions in inflows of water to the Murray–Darling Basin In this paper, we analyse the effects of climate change in the Murray–Darling Basin, using a simulation model that incorporates a state-contingent representation of...

Most settled parts of Australia, notably including the Murray-Darling Basin, experience low and highly variable rainfall levels. Both medium-term cycles such as the Southern Oscillation and longer term climate change contribute uncertainty in additional to that arising from seasonal...

Most models of optimal climate change policy are complex and opaque. In this paper, it is argued that the convexity of climate damage and mitigation cost function provides a basis for the derivation of simple and robust estimates of optimal stabilization targets and carbon prices. For all but a...

The problem of climate change has been described as ‘a unique challenge for economics: it is the greatest and. widest-ranging market failure ever seen’ (Stern 2007, p. i). Among the factors that make climate change a difficult, the most important, arguably, is uncertainty about the future...

Climate change is likely to have substantial effects on irrigated agriculture. Extreme climate events such as droughts are likely to become more common. These patterns are evident in median projections of climate change for the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia. Understanding climate change...

The precautionary principle has been proposed as a basis making decisions about environmental health under conditions of uncertainty, but remains controversial. This paper shows how the precautionary principle may be interpreted as a guide to decision making in complex systems characterised by...

This note is a demonstration that, in the presence of overlapping generations and under standard conditions for a social welfare ordering (Pareto optimality, transitivity, independence), the only ordering consistent with utilitarianism for all people currently alive at any given point in time is...