We investigate the relationship between yield stability and species diversity in managed grasslands. To this end, ecological economic and econometric frameworks are developed and applied to evaluate potential risk-reducing effects of species diversity from a farmer’s perspective. Our empirical...

In this chapter I argue that as a response to the introduction of capital requirements in the form of risk weights investors might potentially choose riskier portfolios than before the regulation – this is, presumably, not what the regulation intends to achieve. That is, while regulation most...

This book presents a simple, yet very powerful, conceptual framework, which can be used to estimate market sizes, prices and their interdependency for new products based on historical market data for existing products in related areas. Even in situations where insufficient data is available the...

Basic causality is that a cause is present or absent and that the effect follows with a success or not. This happy state of affairs becomes opaque when there is a third variable that can be present or absent and that might be a seeming cause. The 2 x 2 x 2 layout deserves the standard name of...

This work is a PhD dissertation, written at the Department of Economics, McGill University. The thesis offers a new framework for inflation as a process of restructuring. Contrary to existing theories of inflation, which tend to take structure and institutions as given for the purpose of...

Complexity theory is designed to bring order out of a rough-and- tumble world, something close to every insurance professional's or actuary's heart. Whether applied in the laboratory or as part of a mathematical model, it can do wonderful things . But in the real world it's just what its name...

Land, labor, indigenous knowledge and institutional resources of producers in the Central Highlands of Ethiopia are investigated. Frequency distribution and comparative statistical analysis of the two regions with respect to these and other parameters suggest that in a situation where all...