Previous analyses assumed that firms must surrender permits as they pollute. If so, then the price of permits may remain constant over measurable intervals if the government injects additional permits at a ceiling price or may even collapse if more permits are injected through an auction...

In markets for fruits, vegetables, and many imported goods, consumers cannot discern quality prior to purchase and can never identify the producer. Producing high-quality, safe goods is costly and raises the collective reputation for quality shared with rival firms. Minimum quality standards...

In markets for fruits, vegetables, and many imported goods, consumers cannot discern quality prior to purchase and can never identify the producer. Producing high-quality, safe goods is costly and raises the "collective reputation" for quality shared with rival firms. Minimum quality standards...

We consider a health authority seeking to allocate annual budgets optimally over time to minimize the discounted social cost of infection(s) evolving in a finite set of "R greater than or equal to 2" groups. This optimization problem is challenging, since as is well known, the standard...

We derive conditions under which cost-increasing measures - consistent with either regulatory constraints or fully expropriated taxes - can increase the profits of all agents active within a common-pool resource. This somewhat counterintuitive result is possible regardless of whether price is...

We show that oil production from existing wells in Texas does not respond to price incentives. Drilling activity and costs, however, do respond strongly to prices. To explain these facts, we reformulate Hotelling's (1931) classic model of exhaustible resource extraction as a drilling problem:...

Virtually every analysis of cap-and-trade programs assumes that firms must surrender permits as they pollute. However, no program, existing or proposed, requires such continual compliance. Some (e.g. the Acid Rain Program limiting SO2 emissions) require compliance once a year; others (e.g. the...

Oligopoly models where prior actions by firms affect subsequent marginal costs have been useful in illuminating policy debates in areas such as antitrust regulation, environmental protection, and international competition. The authors discuss properties of such models when a Cournot equilibrium...