Investments in large, long-lived, energy-intensive infrastructure investments using fossil fuels increase longer-term energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, unless the plant is shut down early or undergoes costly retrofit later. These investments will depend on expectations of retrofit costs...

This paper provides a first analysis of optimal offset policies by a "policy bloc" of fossil fuel importers implementing a climate policy, facing a (non-policy) fringe of other importers, and a bloc of fuel exporters. The policy bloc uses either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme, jointly...

Heterogeneity of public utility services is common in developing countries. In a "high-level" equilibrium, the quality of utility services is high, consumer willingness to pay for services is high, the utility is well funded and staff well paid in order to induce high quality of performance. In...

This paper provides counterexamples to the idea that mitigation of greenhouse gases causing climate change, and adaptation to climate change, are always and everywhere substitutes. The author considers optimal policy for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions when climate damages follow a geometric...

A rainforest can be modeled as a dynamic asset subject to various risks, including risk of fire. Any small part of the forest can be in one of two states: either untouched by forest fire, or already damaged by fire, in which case there is both a local forest loss and increased dryness over a...

What is the utility from obtaining more precise values of natural resource objects (rainforests), through surveys or other similar information gathering? In the value of information problems studied here, a principal who wishes to preserve a resource sets a price to offer to a seller without...

We derive non-cooperative Nash equilibrium (NE) importer and exporter petroleum excise taxes given full within-group tax coordination, but no coordination between groups, assuming that importers do not produce and exporters do not consume petroleum, and petroleum consumption causes a global...