In this paper we evaluate the financial performance of virtually all of the branch offices of a large European savings bank for a recent sixmonth accounting period. We employ a complementary pair of nonparametric techniques to evaluate their financial performance, in terms of their ability to...

Technological choices are multi-dimensional and thus one needs a multidimensional methodology to identify best available techniques. Moreover, in the presence of environmental externalities generated by productive activities, 'best' available techniques should be best from Society's point of...

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...

When environmental externalities are international - i.e. transfrontier - they most often are multilateral and embody public good characteristics. Improving upon inefficient laissez-faire equilibria requires voluntary cooperation for which the game-theoretic core concept provides optimal...

In order to rank universities, rather than aggregating the indicators used by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) - using weightings which, though reasonable, are at the same time arbitrary and inflexible - one can compare universities in terms of dominance and hence deduce various...

In this paper we introduce the CLIMNEG World Simulation (CWS) model for simulating cooperative game theoretic aspects of global climate negotiations. The model is derived from the seminal RICE model by Nordhaus and Yang (1996). We first state the necessary conditions that determine optimal...

Two theses on the likelihood of international cooperation for achieving international optimality in transboundary pollution problems are being confronted: a pessimistic one and an optimistic one. On the one hand a "Small Stable Coalitions" (SSC) thesis ? based on the stability of coalitions...

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...