In the past year, climate change has moved from political controversy to political consensus; at least, in relation for price-based policies the need to limit emissions. Uncertainties remain but with both major parties proposing to develop an emissions trading regime, it is timely to highlight...

In this paper we consider the problem of accommodating indigenous cultural heritage values in resource assessment and valuation. We suggest a need for price-based approaches to valuation to be replaced by or complemented with quantitative constraints, reflecting the requirement that rights...

For much of the 20th century, the expansion of irrigated agriculture in the Murray Darling Basin, was treated as a self-evidently desirable objective, to be pursued without excessive regard to questions of economic costs and benefits. Irrigation seemed to offer a ‘droughtproofing’ solution...

It is likely that climate change will be associated with reductions in inflows of water to the Murray–Darling Basin In this paper, we analyse the effects of climate change in the Murray–Darling Basin, using a simulation model that incorporates a state-contingent representation of...

This review will focus on the question of discounting. The paper begins with an outline of the expected utility model used in the Stern Review. Next, the question of ‘inherent discounting’, that is, the idea that future outcomes should be discounted simply because they are in the future, is...

It is now virtually certain that Australia and the world will experience significant climate change over the next century, as a result of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. This note is a brief discussion of the projected effects of climate change on...

The terms "grandfather clause" and "grandfathering" describe elements of a policy programme in which existing participants in an activity are protected from the impact of regulations, restrictions or charges applied to new entrants. In this paper, the role of grandfathering in the design of a...

The relative merits of different systems of property rights to allocate water amongdifferent extractive uses are evaluated for the case where variability of supply isimportant. Three systems of property rights are considered. In the first, variablesupply is dealt with through the use of water...

Most models of optimal climate change policy are complex and opaque. In this paper, it is argued that the convexity of climate damage and mitigation cost function provides a basis for the derivation of simple and robust estimates of optimal stabilization targets and carbon prices. For all but a...

The problem of climate change has been described as ‘a unique challenge for economics: it is the greatest and. widest-ranging market failure ever seen’ (Stern 2007, p. i). Among the factors that make climate change a difficult, the most important, arguably, is uncertainty about the future...