This paper presents an analytically tractable dynamic game in which players jointly use a resource. The resource replenishes fully but collapses should total use exceed a threshold in any one period. The initial level of use is known to be safe. If it is at all optimal to increase resource use,...

Time was when solar energy was facilely dismissed as impractical, inefficient, and pricey. In recent years, however, innovations in technology, regulation, and financing have resulted in remarkable efficiency improvements and price reductions, thereby reversing the skepticism about this...

Dams are essential for water storage and hydropower generation, but change river flow patterns and endanger local environments. Dam projects may further exacerbate already existing problems in trans-boundary rivers. We consider three scenarios of institutional factors: (1) each country pursues...

This paper presents a simple two-period overlapping generations model that contains environmental and health issues. It investigates an intergenerational conflict between old and young generations as regards two defensive expenditures offsetting the influence of a worsening environment...

The paper presents a macroeconomic approach to sustainable growth. After clarifying the concept of sustainability, the interdependence between natural resources and accumulated capital stocks such as physical, human, and knowledge capital is discussed. The conditions for the substitution process...

This paper investigates the economic implications of a comprehensive approach to sustainable greenhouse policies that strives to stabilise the atmospheric concentration of the five major greenhouse gases at an ecologically determined threshold level. In a theoretical optimisation model...

We compare the instantaneous and the long run effects of environmental reform in closed and open economies. Harmonization upward (decreasing distortions where they are most severe) or harmonization downward (increasing distortions where they are less severe), both tend to increase instantaneous...

Optimal management of biodiversity at the national level, even if achievable, is not necessarily consistent with a global optimum. While the existence of trading relationships allows for the possibility of the use of trade interventions as a means of imposing unilateral solutions, the presence...

The present study examines the optimal recycling rate for municipal solid waste. First, an optimal control model is developed to describe the waste accumulation phenomenon. The physical costs of recycling, the social costs of landfilling, and consumers' environmental preferences are accounted...

Existing models of open-access resources are applicable to non-storable resources, such as fish. Many open-access resources, however, are used to produce storable goods. Elephants, rhinos, and tigers are three prominent examples. Anticipated future scarcity of these resources will increase...