A new instrument for hedging weather risks has made its appearance in the financial arena. Trade in 'weather derivatives' has taken off in the US, and interest is growing elsewhere. Whilst such contracts may be simply interpreted as a new tool for solving a historical problem, the question...

Groundwater basins are usually separated into aquifers that are hydrologically interrelated. This interrelation may take the form of water movement from one aquifer to another. When differentials in water quality exist, pumping from one of the aquifers can cause water movement that may be...

Contracts providing payments for not developing natural areas, or for removing cropland from production, generally require long-term commitments. Landowners, however, can decide to prematurely terminate the contract when the opportunity cost of complying with conservation requirements increases....

The paper explores the relationships between the design of public incentives and the policy-maker's desired timing of abandonment of a polluting technology, when this requires an irreversible private investment and the firm faces uncertain appropriable benefits from the technological change. Two...

The paper analyses the timing of spontaneous environmental innovation when second-mover advantages, arising from the expectation of declining investment costs, increase the option value of waiting created by investment irreversibility and uncertainty about private payoffs. We then focus on the...