This study uses the methods of experimental economics to investigate possible causes for the failure of the Hotelling rule for nonrenewable resources. We argue that as long as resource stocks are high enough, producers may choose to (partially) ignore the dynamic component of their production...

We consider a competitive extraction industry comprising many small firms, each with a slightly different quality of mineral holdings. With "rapidly" declining quality of holding per firm we observe rent declining over and interval. We do not work with the planning solution, commonly invoked in...

A sufficiently rapidly rising carbon tax may increase near-term emissions compared with the case of no carbon tax. Even so, such a carbon tax path may reduce total costs related to climate change, since the tax may reduce total carbon extraction. A government cannot commit to a specific carbon...

The increase of fuel extraction costs as well as of temperature will make it likely that in the medium-term future technological or political measures against global warming may be implemented. In assessments of a current climate policy the possibility of medium-term future developments like...

The Hotelling rule argues that the price for a nonrenewable resource adjusts to the shadow value of the resource, reflecting the remaining availability of the resource. We empirically test the Hotelling rule on the effect of unanticipated oil field discoveries. We do not find evidence for a...

Optimum commodity taxation theory asks how to raise a given amount of tax revenue while minimizing distortions. We reexamine Ramsey’s inverse elasticity rule in presence of Hotelling-type non-renewable natural resources. Under standard assumptions borrowed from the...

This dissertation was written by Johannes Pfeiffer while he was working with the ifo Institute for Economic Research. It was completed in November 2016 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the department of economics of the University Regensburg in December 2016. The thesis studies unintended...

A sufficiently rapidly rising carbon tax may increase near-term emissions compared with the case of no carbon tax. Even so, such a carbon tax path may reduce total costs related to climate change, since the tax may reduce total carbon extraction. A government cannot commit to a specific carbon...

We show how a monopolistic owner of oil reserves responds to a carbon-free substitute becoming available at some uncertain point in the future if demand is isoelastic and variable extraction costs are zero but upfront exploration investment costs have to be made. Not the arrival of this...