We explore the design of self-financing tax/subsidy mechanisms to solve hold-up problems in environmental regulation. Under Cournot competition, announcing the subsidy rate seems to be preferable to announcing the tax rate. Moreover, for constant marginal damage the hold-up problem can always be...

We examine how basic research should be financed. While basic research is a public good benefiting innovating entrepreneurs it also affects the entire economy: occupational choices of potential entrepreneurs, wages of workers, dividends to shareholders, and aggregate output. We show that the...

We study the allocation of commodities through a two-stage hierarchy of competitive markets. Groups or countries trade at global prices while individuals within a group trade at local prices. We identify the free trade and the autarky equilibrium as polar cases. We show that no other two-stage...