Designing agri-environmental schemes targeted at conservation poses the key question of how many financial resources should be allocated to address a particular aim such as the conservation of an endangered species. Economists can contribute to an answer by estimating the 'optimal level of...

What factors shape environmental policies across Europe? In order to answer this question most economists would probably adopt a Public Choice approach. This approach has explained some aspects of environmental policies that exist in a similar fashion across Europe convincingly. But why do many...

This paper assesses the impact of social factors on the development of allergic diseases in early childhood. Epidemiological research has shown increasing allergy rates with improvements in social economic status (SES). However, we argue that the pattern of social influences on allergies is too...

The introduction of conservation-friendly farming measures is an important tool for biodiversity conservation. Recently, a debate has started whether this money is spent effectively, i.e. whether it successfully contributes to conserve biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Several types of...

Notions on robustness exist in many facets. They come from different disciplines and reflect different worldviews. Consequently, they contradict each other very often, which makes the term less applicable in a general context. Robustness approaches are often limited to specific problems for...

In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten haben die Städte in Deutschland einen ausgeprägten Suburbanisierungsprozess durchlaufen. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass dieser Prozess Auswirkungen auf die Lebensqualität aller Stadtbewohnerinnen und -bewohner, insbesondere aber auch auf die ältere Bevölkerung...

In this paper we investigate an important obstacle which substantially complicates cooperation between ecologists and economists but which has received little attention so far: differences between the modelling approaches in economics and ecology. To understand these differences, 60 models...