The European Union (EU) energy policy has three targets: supply security, development of a competitive energy sector and environmental sustainability. The EU countries have issued so-called National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAP) for increased renewable energy generation. Biomass is...

The aim of cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) is to inform the allocation of scarce resources. CEA is routinely used in assessing the cost-effectiveness of specific health technologies by agencies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in England and Wales. But...

Purpose: Although information on variations in health service performance is now more widely available, relatively little is known about how healthcare payers use this information to improve resource allocation. We explore to what extent and how Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in England have used...

Although most theoretical models of household decisionmaking assume perfect information, empirical studies suggest that information asymmetries can have large impacts on resource allocation. In this study, I demonstrate the importance of these asymmetries in transnational households, where...

Helicoverpa spp. (heliothis) are a major insect pest of cotton, grains and horticulture in the Murray‐ Darling Basin. Climate change is likely to make conditions more favourable for heliothis. This could cause regional comparative advantages in irrigation systems to change as management costs...

On 5-6 September 2012 SUERF held its 30th Colloquium “States, Banks, and the Financing of the Economy” at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium. All the papers in this publication discuss from different...

In this paper, we study a framework where allocations of goods result from distributed negotiation conducted by autonomous agents implementing very simple deals. Assuming that these agents are strictly self-interested, we study the impact of different negotiation protocols over the outcomes of...

In general, the disclosure of know-how and technological knowledge could harm the disclosing firm. Firms, however, often share their know-how freely and yet enhance their profits. We provide a theoretical framework and a new insight into know-how disclosure. We consider a multiproduct...

In this paper, we consider hoist scheduling problems in a job shop environment. For each job several operations can be operated on tanks, and their processing times are bounded. The objective is to assign resources to both processing and transport operations and then to schedule those tasks on...

In general, the disclosure of know-how and technological knowledge could harm the disclosing firm. Firms, however, often share their know-how freely and enhances their profits. We provide a theoretical framework and a new insight for know-how disclosure. We consider a multi-product oligopolistic...