Informationsgüter, für die Wirtschaftssubjekte eine positive Zahlungsbereitschaft haben, werden typischerweise in "Kopien" durch Speicherung auf lnformationsträgem verbreitet und durch Dekodierung einer Kopie genutzt. In wohlfahrtsökonomischer Betrachtung sollte keinem Anbieter eines...

Früher waren Assimilationsdienste von Gewässern wie andere natürliche Ressourcen freie Güter in dem Sinn, daß ihr Angebot trotz unentgeltlicher Nutzung die Nachfrage überstieg; die Nutzung zum Nullpreis war effizient. Die zunehmende konkurrierende Nutzung als unbezahlter Produktionsfaktor...

This is a comment on Urs Schweizer's paper with the above title presented at the International Seminar on the New Institutional Economics in Wallerfangen, May/June 1989. After focusing on problems in selecting rules and outcomes of rules, it discusses the Buchanan-Tullock issue of...

Incomplete enforcement of environmental laws and regulations does not seem to be a transitory phenomenon. Enforcement deficits may arise because polluters are reluctant to comply but also because the monitoring agency prefers pleasant working conditions to rigorous enforcement effort. In this...

The basic focus of this paper is to look at ecological tax reform from a public good perspective rather than from a Pigouvian externality cum tax reform perspective. Our point of departure is the insight, aptly expressed by Heller and Starrett (1976, p. l 0), e. g., that "one can think of...

This paper deals with two different types of irreversibility: Pollution irreversibility occurs if the stock of pollution cannot be reduced (any more) by nature's assimilative capacity; characteristics irreversibility occurs when some characteristic of the environmental resource is irreversibly...