This thesis consists of a summary and four self-contained papers. <p> Paper [I] Following the 1987 report by The World Commission on Environment and Development, the genuine saving has come to play a key role in the context of sustainable development, and the World Bank regularly publishes numbers...</p>

Following the 1987 report by The World Commission on Environment and Development, the genuine saving has come to play a key role in the context of sustainable development, and the World Bank regularly publishes numbers for genuine saving on a national basis. However, these numbers are typically...

This thesis consists of four self-contained papers related to the Nordic electricity market. Paper [I] examine how the reform of the Nordic electricity markets has affected competition in the electric power supply market, Nord Pool. The question is if the common power market has been competitive...

Much evidence suggests that people are concerned with their relative consumption, i.e., their consumption in relation to the consumption of others. Yet, the social costs of conspicuous consumption have so far played little (or no) role in savings-based indicators of sustainable development. The...

This paper shows how the first-best and second-best rules for optimal public good provision depend on the adaptation to private and public consumption. Adaptation in private consumption typically leads to over-provision relative to the Samuelson condition, while adaptation in public consumption...

This paper concerns optimal taxation and public goods in an economic federation with decentralized leadership, where one lower level government is first mover also in the horizontal dimension. Under plausible assumptions, horizontal leadership reinforces the incentives created by decentralized...

This paper deals with optimal income taxation based on a model with households where men and women allocate their time between market work and household production, and where households differ depending on which spouse has comparative advantage in market work. The purpose is to analyze the tax...

This chapter concerns welfare measurement in economies, where the government raises revenue by means of distortionary taxation. A major issue is the treatment of (state-variable) public goods in the context of social accounting. Although the marginal value that the government attaches to a...

This paper deals with optimal income taxation under international outsourcing and FDI. We show how the joint effect of outsourcing and FDI on the optimal marginal income tax rates depends on whether FDI is horizontal or vertical.

This paper contains a fairly brief, but self-contained, version of the history of welfare economics, as well as the more modern welfare results. We introduce public goods and asymmetric information, and we hint at some of the modern mechanism design results. The paper also contains a section on...