This paper presents a comprehensive economic framework for the conservation of biological diversity. This framework combines a simple model for valuing different sets of species with a decision theoretic model involving extinction probabilities to identify the optimal conservation strategy....

To allocate scarce resources to the conservation of biological diversity in an effective way, it is necessary to measure diversity. One argument in favor of species conservation is that species have an option value arising from their potential future use (e.g., in curing a disease). We use a...

It is sometimes claimed that different types of size data in biology follow a power law. Here, a formal statistical test of the power law for discrete size data is described. The test is based on embedding the power law in the nonparametric family of distributions for which frequency is...

We analyze a model of environmental regulation with learning about environmental damages and endogenous choice of emissions abatement technology by a polluting firm. We compare environmental policy under discretion, in which policy is updated upon learning new information, versus under rules, in...