This article studies the comparative statics of output subsidies for firms, with monotonic preferences over costs and returns, that face price and production uncertainty. The modeling of deficiency payments, support-price schemes, and stochastic supply shifts in a state-space framework is...

Cost functions dual to stochastic production technologies are derived and their properties are discussed. These cost functions are shown to be consistent with expected-utility maximization without placing serious structural restrictions on the underlying technology. Copyright 1998, Oxford...

An analytically simple and tractable approach to firm-level welfare analysis of complete and partial mean-preserving price stabilization for producers with general risk-averse preferences facing a stochastic technology is developed. Necessary and sufficient conditions for price stabilization to...

The issue of whether willingness to pay (WTP) for the benefits generated by a public good should be elicited on an individual or on a household basis is addressed. Differences between individual and household WTP may arise when members of the household are mutually altruistic. It is shown that,...

‘Risk’ has become a central theme in 21st-century policy thinking. In particular, there has been considerable discussion of the ‘Great Risk Shift’, that is, the process by which the burden of risk has been shifted away from governments and employers and on to workers and households. The...

We specify an oligopoly game, where firms choose quantity in order to maximize profits, that is strategically equivalent to a standard Tullock rent-seeking game. We then show that the Tullock game may be interpreted as an oligopsonistic market for influence. Alternative specifications of the...

The relative costs of taking employment or receiving welfare are usually understood through comparisons of a person’s social security entitlements and their wage alternative, known as replacement rates. In some situations it appears that the additional income from working is negligible, and...

This article examines six widely-held doctrines concerning economic theory and economic policy that have been refuted, or at least rendered highly problematic by the global financial crisis, namely: (i) the efficient markets hypothesis; (ii) the Great Moderation; (iii) central bank independence;...

The effects of global climate change on agriculture will be diverse and complex. Some important qualitative conclusions emerge from the literature. First, it is important to focus on the rate at which climate changes and the capacity of farmers to adjust, rather than on absolute changes in...