In their 30-year update to <i>Limits to Growth</i>, Meadows<i> et al.</i> call for a vision of sustainable development that includes systemic change brought on by new perspectives on the purpose of development, new ways of measuring progress, and changes in social norms. Here, I discuss Meadows<i> et al.</i>’s...

CCS (carbon dioxide capture and storage) is an issue which has received increasing attention in the debate on climate change over the last several years because of its relative technical simplicity and very large potential in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The absence of secondary benefits...

CCS (carbon dioxide capture and storage) is an issue which has received increasing attention in the debate on climate change over the last years because of its relative technical simplicity and a large expected potential in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The coexistence of both strong...

While models based on Friedman's (1957) permanent-income hypothesis can provide oilproducing countries with long-run fiscal targets, they usually abstract from short-run costs associated with consolidation. This paper proposes a model that takes such adjustment costs (or 'habits') into account....

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:...

We consider the Hartwick rule for capital accumulation and resource depletion, provide semantic clarifications and investigate whether this rule indicates sustainability and requires substitutability between manmade and natural capital. In addition to shedding light on the meaning of the...

This note gives a brief, non-rigorous sketch of basic optimal control theory, which is a useful tool in several simple economic problems,such as those in resource and environmental economics. While the mathematical analysis in the note is self-contained, there is not much explanation and...

The market structure for many mineral industries can be described as oligopoly with potential for Stackelberg leadership. This paper derives and analyzes dynamically consistent extraction equilibria in a two-period discrete-time “Truly” Stackelberg (TS) model of non-renewable resource...

The separation of powers and responsibilities has evolved over time in Italy given that political ideals have been pushing towards a greater decentralization for the last twenty years. Under environmental federalism issues, an interesting case of study - capable of being empirically treated - is...

The purpose of this paper is to show that in a general equilibrium framework it is never optimal to use high cost substitute after lower cost exhaustible resource even if it is possible to accumulate productive capital. Indeed if the high cost substitute is scarce it is always optimal to consume...