Efficiency in the Pareto sense and strategy-proofness have been the central design desiderata in market design for allocation of discrete resources, such as dorm allocation, school choice, and kidney exchange. However, more precise efficiency objectives, such as welfare maximization, have been neglected. In a setting where heterogeneous indivisible goods are being allocated without monetary tra...

We consider patent pool formation by owners of essential patents for differentiated standards that may be complements or substitutes in use. Pooling improves coordination in terms of royalty setting within a standard but provokes a strategic response from licensors in the competing standard. We characterise the incentives to form and defect from pools within standards and show how pool formatio...

The equine industries in Ireland are vibrant and growing. They are broadly classified into two sectors: Thoroughbred racing, and sports and leisure. This paper describes these sectors in terms of governance, education and training in equine welfare, and available data concerning horse numbers, identification, traceability and disposal. Animal welfare, and specifically equine welfare, has receiv...

Based on production guidelines, organic livestock farming has set itself the goal of establishing environmentally friendly production, sustaining animals in good health, realising high animal welfare standards, and producing products of high quality. By striving for these goals, organic livestock farming meets the demands of an increasing number of consumers who are critical of conventional pro...

Increasing global demand for animal products produced with ever greater efficiency makes it unlikely that the pressure placed on livestock industries and therefore the animals themselves will diminish in the foreseeable future. Increasing affluence and awareness of welfare issues by society may drive improvements in welfare standards, but this may be regional rather than global in impact. Some ...

Global expectations for improvements in the health of humans and animals require scientific studies involving the use of animals while addressing public concerns about the welfare of the animals used in science. However, more than 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty, about 850 million are chronically hungry (and the number is rising), and most of these people are found in developing coun...

In Asia and the Far East, livestock undergo major suffering due to malnutrition, overloading, and ill-treatment. At slaughter animals are handled roughly and watch other animals being killed; stunning is not practised. Cruelty to other animals such as elephants, horses, donkeys, bears, dogs, and circus animals has largely been prevented through the efforts of animal welfare organisations. Gover...

This paper develops a method for nodal pricing and market clearing mechanism considering reliability of the system. The effects of components reliability on electricity price, market participants’ profit and system social welfare is considered. This paper considers reliability both for evaluation of market participant’s optimality as well as for fair pricing and market clearing mechanism. To ac...