In many cases consumers cannot observe firms’ investment in quality or safety, but have only beliefs on the average quality of the industry. In addition, the outcome of the collective investment game of the firms may be stochastic since firms cannot control perfectly the technology or external...

We couple a spatially homogeneous energy balance climate model with an economic growth model which incorporates two potential policies against climate change: mitigation, which is the traditional policy, and geoengineering. We analyze the optimal policy mix of geoengineering and mitigation in...

We study a dynamic game of climate policy design in terms of emissions and solar radiation management (SRM) involving two heterogeneous regions or countries. Countries emit greenhouse gasses (GHGs), and can block incoming radiation by unilateral SRM activities, thus reducing global temperature....

The paper studies the effect of scale economies on the optimal capacity adjustment of a mutiplant firm. It is shown that with increasing economies of scale plants are ranked in decreasing order, after which the optimal choice is to scrap the largest one. On the contrary, if there are decreasing...

Short-term auctions for access to entry terminals of the British gas-network appear to successfully allocate scarce resources and capture scarcity rent. Now long-term auctions are being introduced to guide future capacity expansion decisions. In our model the fraction of rights issued in the...

In this paper, we study a firm’s optimal lobby behavior and its effect on investment in pollution abatement capital. We develop a dynamic framework where a representative firm can invest in both abatement and lobby capital in response to a possible future increase in pollution tax. We show...

We study the competition to operate an infrastructure service by developing a model where firms report a two-dimensional sealed bid: the price to consumers and the concession fee paid to the government. Two alternative bidding rules are considered in this paper. One rule consists of awarding the...

In this article we analyse the effects of different regulatory schemes (price cap and profit sharing) on a firm’s investment of endogenous size. Using a real option approach in continuous time, we show that profit sharing does not affect a firm’s start-up decision relative to a pure price...

The main issue is the organisation of firms when different degrees of labour participation are taken into account. We start reviewing the literature on the LM firm. We then consider a less radical labour participation, i.e. the Aoki firm. We survey extensions of the Aoki's firm to the case of...

The main idea behind this paper is that social capital is not, as generally suggested by the socio-economic literature, an individual attitude towards something which does not imply privately appropriable economic benefits. Actually, SC might and should be interpreted as a public component of an...