In this paper we test empirically with the Nordhaus and Yang (1996) RICE model the core property of the transfer scheme adv ocated by Germain, Toint and Tulkens (1997). This scheme is designed to sustain full cooperation in a voluntary international environmental agreement by making all...

Calling upon both positive and normative economics, we attempt to characterize the issues at stake in the current international negotiations on climatic change. We begin (section 2) by reviewing the main features of the Protocol. Then (Section 3), we identify by means of an elementary economic...

Musgravian externalities, formulated and illustrated by Musgrave in a 1966 paper on social goods are seen in this paper as one form of the interactions that occur between the components of a federation. The original formal apparatus is first exposed briefly. In that context, it is then...

The usually assumed two categories of costs involved in climate change policy analysis, namely abatement and damage costs, hide the presence of a third category, namely adaptation costs. This dodges the determination of an appropriate level for them. Including adaptation costs explicitly in the...

That climate policies are costly is evident and therefore often creates major fears. But the alternative (no action) also has a cost. Mitigation costs and damages incurred depend on what the climate policies are; moreover, they are substitutes. This brings climate policies naturally in the realm...

The texts of the COP 21 Decision and its Annex are scrutinized from the particular point of view of the extent to which economic theoretic concepts can be considered to inspire them. While this is shown to be partially the case in some of the intentions, the texts themselves contain more...

This paper studies the optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) policies in an economy where individuals differ in their reproductive capacity (or fecundity) and in their wage. We find that the optimal ART policy varies with the postulated social welfare criterion....

We consider a two-period overlapping generations model in which individual voters differ by age and by productivity. In such a setting, a redistributive Pay-As-You-Go system is politically sustainable, even when the interest rate is larger than the rate of population growth. The workers with...

The European population is living longer but retiring earlier. More and more individuals are spending an increasing fraction of their life-time relying on retirement benefits. At the same time, social security programs face mounting financial difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to explain...

It is often argued that implicit taxation on continued activity of elderly workers is responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or of first-best efficiency, there would be no such implicit taxation. The point of this paper is that when...