The existing literature on climate change offers little guidance on why one specification or another of a "damages function" has been selected. Ideally, one wants a functional form that captures reality adequately, yet is analytically sufficiently tractable to yield useful results. This paper...

The <i>Stern Review</i> calls for immediate decisive action to stabilize greenhouse gases because "the benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweighs the costs." The economic analysis supporting this conclusion consists mostly of two basic strands. The first strand is a formal aggregative...

In textbook expositions of the equity-premium, riskfree-rate and equity-volatility puzzles, agents are sure of the economy's structure while growth rates are normally distributed. But because of parameter uncertainty the thin-tailed normal distribution conditioned on realized data becomes a...

By incorporating the probability distribution directly into the analysis, this paper proposes a new theoretical approach to resolving the perennial dilemma of being uncertain about what discount rate to use in cost-benefit analysis. A numerical example is constructed from the results of a survey...

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part I: Introduction to the Maximum Principle -- 1. The Calculus of Variations and the Stationary Rate of Return on Capital -- 2. The Prototype-Economic Control Problem -- 3. The Maximum Principle in One Dimension -- 4. Applications of the Maximum...

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part I. Introduction to the Maximum Principle -- 1. The Calculus of Variations and the Stationary Rate of Return on Capital -- 2. The Prototype-Economic Control Problem -- 3. The Maximum Principle in One Dimension -- 4. Applications of the...