When the agent making an investment decision is different from the one bearing the costs of the usage decision, the outcome (energy usage, in this case) is socially sub-optimal, a scenario known in the energy efficient technology case as “split incentive” effect. Using a sample of...

Discrete-time stochastic models of groundwater management have been extensively used for understanding a variety of issues in groundwater management for agriculture. Most models used suffer from two drawbacks: relatively simplistic treatment of extraction cost (remarked in many papers in the...

We provide consistent, cross-country estimates of price and income elasticity for the residential sector of 11 OECD countries. Using survey data from 2011 on annual consumption of electricity and sample-derived average electricity price, we provide country-specific price elasticity estimates and...

Many countries are facing a dilemma over whether to extend the lives of their old reactors or make costly capital investments on Renewable Energy (RE). This paper explores the determinants of Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) for RE in France by means of a contingent valuation question that was included...

We propose a novel two-step approach to elicitation in surveys and provide supporting statistical theory for the models suggested. The essential idea is to combine self-selected intervals in a first step and then employ brackets generated from the intervals in a second step. In this way we...

Conventional cost-benefit rules typically assume that the alternative to the project under evaluation is “doing nothing” or “business as usual”. In this note we contrast this approach to one where the alternative is to provide another environmental good or service. We show that this...

We analyze an approach to quantitative information elicitation in surveys that includes many currently popular variants as special cases. Rather than asking the individual to state a point estimate or select between given brackets, the individual can self-select any interval of choice. We...

In this note we discuss two alternative ways of undertaking a social cost-benefit analysis. One approach is the conventional one where benefits and costs are expressed in monetary units. The other approach uses an environmental asset as the payment vehicle. The properties of the two approaches...

In this note we discuss how to treat taxes in a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). In particular we relate the shadow price of taxes in CBA to the concepts the marginal cost of public funds MCPF) and the marginal excess burden (MEB) of taxes. In particular we demonstrate that the MCPF is equal to one...

When the agent making an investment decision is different from the one bearing the costs of the usage decision, the outcome (energy usage, in this case) is socially sub-optimal, a scenario known in the energy efficient technology case as "split incentive" effect. Using a sample of individual...