This paper discusses three main approaches for analysing oil prices: non-structural models, the supplydemand framework, and the informal approach. Each approach emphasises a certain set of drivers of oil prices. While non-structural models rest on the theory of exhaustible resources, the...

After the 2000 Water-War, access to water in Bolivia has become a major social demand and thus a prime and contentious political issue. The event has revealed an overwhelming opposition to neo-liberal approaches to water management and has allowed the articulation of a new discourse that sees...

Although the relationship between natural resources and civil war has received much attention, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. Controversies and contradictions in the stylized facts persist because resource extraction is treated as exogenous while in reality fighting affects...

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...

In this paper we derive optimal stockpiling policies for an economy that faces an embargo threat with respect to essential resources. The properties of the optimal program depend crucially on the access of this country to a perfect capital market and on the factor allocation in embargo periods....

The probability that an agent takes a certain action or a certain event occurs depends often on the actions taken by some agents. If this probability depends not only on current actions but on the sum of all past actions, these stock-dependent risks imply an intertemporal effect. In the present...

If an economy faces stochastic fluctuations of the resource availability, for example in the case of resource imports, it is optimal in the long run to increase the domestic savings rate in contrast to a deterministic world. Uncertainty is partly substituted by capital accumulation. But this is...

The ever greater role given to public participation by laws and regulations, in particular in the field of environmental management calls for new operational methods and tools for managers and practitioners. This paper analyses the potentials and the critical limitations of current approaches in...

This paper extends the classical exhaustible-resource/stock-pollution model with the irreversibility of pollution decay. Within this framework, we answer the question how the potential irreversibility of pollution affects the extraction path. We investigate the conditions under which the economy...

The concept of natural resource rents is much used in the natural resource economics literature. It is therefore somewhat surprising that in this same literature it is difficult to find a clear definition of the concept. Possibly as a result, the concept is often loosely employed and in some...