The phasing-out of the EU milk quota regime in 2015 challenges the Austrian milk sector and calls for its re-organization. Private raw milk management systems and contracts between milk producers and milk processors and traders will replace the national milk quota regime. The aim of the study is...

We introduce a “smart” cap and trade system that eliminates the welfare costs of asymmetric information (“uncertainty”). This cap responds endogenously to technology or macroeconomic shocks, relying on the market price of certificates to aggregate information. It allows policy makers to...

In this paper, we discuss the relationship between responsibility and joint production.Responsibility mirrors our ability to act freely. We can act freely only if we can assumeresponsibility for our actions and their consequences; the limits of our responsibility aretherefore also the limits of...

This paper presents the model of an economy subject to the mass conservation principle. The economic system is related to the environment by a flow of virgin materials into the economy, and by the diffusion of waste into the environment. Eco-efficiency contributes to reducing material waste in...

This article considers the relationship between centralised, exogenous institutions and the embedded, endogenous institutions of rural governance in Europe through an examination of the evaluation procedures of the European LEADER programme. LEADER is presented in the literature as progressive...

In the standard setting a system of tradable permits is effective and cost-efficient in attaining the policy objective of pollution reduction. This outcome is challenged in case of a tradable permit system in a federal system/constitution with individual states having discretionary power...

Many countries are implementing or at least considering policies to counter increasingly certain negative impacts from climate change. An increasing amount of research has been devoted to the analysis of the costs of climate change and its mitigation, as well as to the design of policies, such...

To answer the question "How to be an Ecological Economist", we must start by defining the field of Ecological Economics. Mainstream Economics altogether lacks the concepts required to deal adequately with nature, justice and time. It was the absence of these three concepts in this otherwise...

The Rural Development Regulation (RDR) within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), as an exemplary manifestation of the New Rural Development Paradigm, has achieved significant results. Nevertheless, it has increasingly become liable to institutional complexity and central control in an...