This paper provides microeconomic foundations to the relationship between the values of residential properties and the environmental quality of their location. It constructs an environmental–quality-adjusted lifetime-utility function by combining satisfaction from consumption over the lifespan...

Locust swarms hit subsistence-staple-crop-growing households at random and are not privately controllable. A regional aerial-spraying scheme that supports these households’ livelihood at the least cost is proposed. The properties of this scheme are analysed and two steady states are...

This paper focuses on the consumption of alcohol to numb the suffering associated with failure. While drinking reduces the individual’s current level of suffering, it leads to future failures and potentially greater suffering. The basic model shows that the stationary status of an alcoholic is...

Myopic use of mind-altering substances is proposed to be equal to the product of the user’s current levels of relative-deprivation feeling and substance-tolerance. If initially this product is sufficiently large the user is trapped in a deprivation-use-addiction vicious cycle. There may be a...

This paper speculates how Ramsey’s (1928) model of optimal consumption and saving would have been constructed had Sir Frank Ramsey lived in a period of greater awareness of the environmental damaged caused by production processes. The paper extends Ramsey’s model to the case where the...

A rule for setting a tax on carbon emissions to limit their atmospheric stock to a predetermined level is developed for a world inhabited by uncoordinated, myopic, expected utility maximizing agents. In all locations, the mean of the marginal product of the carbon emitting input diminishes and...

This paper uses optimal control theory to derive a desirable trajectory of the number of royalties-paying users of state-owned spectrum for broadcasting. The spectrum royalties are set by the public planner to maximize the consumers’ utilities over an infinite planning horizon. The...

Optimal control theory is employed to characterize the socially optimal trajectory of the royalty per channel and the number of royalty-paying users of state-owned spectrum for broadcasting. The spectrum royalty is set by an omniscient public planner to maximize the sum of the discounted...

Early-age enlistment increases a small country's potential army size and thereby its attack-deterrence capacity. However, physical and psychological injuries and, ultimately, death generate a loss of quality-adjusted life-years that reduces the net benefit from early-age enlistment. The net...