In this paper we analyze the relationship between technological greening, eco-efficiency and no- regret strategies. By using a simple theoretical model, we evaluate the effects of technological greening on creation value, pollution level, and eco-efficiency. We show three contrasting effects of...

Harsanyi (1955) proved that, in the context of uncertainty, social ratio- nality and the Pareto principle impose severe constraints on the degree of priority for the worst-off that can be adopted in the social evaluation. Since then, the literature has hesitated between an ex ante approach that...

This paper reviews a number of recent contributions that study pension design with myopic individuals. Its objective is to explore how the presence of more or less myopic individuals affects pension design when individuals differ also in productivity. This double heterogeneity gives rise to an...

This paper discusses the merits of wealth transfer taxation on both efficiency and equity grounds. It first deals with the popular debate that is dominated by American economists. This debate concerns the US estate tax, which is one, among many, types of wealth transfer tax. After addressing the...

This paper examines the impact on old age poverty and the fiscal cost of universal minimum old age pensions in Latin America using recent household survey data for 18 countries. Alleviating old age poverty requires different approach from other age groups and a minimum pension is likely to be...

A set of coalition structures P is farsightedly stable (i) if all possible deviations from any coalition structure p belonging to P to a coalition structure outside P are deterred by the threat of ending worse off or equally well off, (ii) if there exists a farsighted improving path from any...

The popular discounted utilitarian criterion for infinite horizon social choice has been criticized on the ground that it treats successive generations unfairly. I propose to evaluate intergenerational welfare with a rank- discounted utilitarian (RDU) criterion instead. The criterion amounts to...

In this paper we explore the consequences for optimality of a social planner adopting two different welfare criteria. The framework of analysis is an OLG model with physical and human capital. We first show that, when the SWF is a discounted sum of individual utilities defined over consumption...

In this paper we modify a standard quality ladder model by assuming that R&D is driven by outsider firms and the winners of the race sell licenses over their patents, instead of entering directly the inter- mediate good sector. As a reward they get the aggregate profit of the industry. Moreover,...

Asymmetric GARCH models were developped for equity stocks to take into account the larger response of the conditional variance to negative price shocks. We show that these asymmetric GARCH models are also relevant for modelling commodity prices. Contrary to the equity case, positive shocks are...