This paper analyzes nature protection by a social planner under different ‘utilitarian’ social welfare functions. For that purpose we construct an integrated model of the economy and the ecosystem with explicit consideration of nonhuman species and with competition between human and nonhuman species for land and prey biomass. We characterize and compare the efficient allocations when social wel...

The paper proposes a model for measuring and valuing biodiversity based on evolutionary information, called the phylogenetic tree model. While avoiding the strong restrictions of Weitzman’s [Quart. J. Econ. 107 (1992) 363] “cladistic” approach, the phylogenetic tree model retains much of the mathematical simplicity of the cladistic model. In particular, in the phylogenetic tree model the divers...

Given that both the costs and the benefits of biodiversity-enhancing land-use measures are subject to spatial variation, considerations of allocational efficiency call for spatially differentiated compensation payments for such measures. However, when deciding whether to implement uniform or spatially differentiated compensation payments, the regulator has to balance the allocational efficiency...

When is the Standard Analysis of Common Property Extraction Under Free Access Correct?---A GameTheoretic Justification for Non Game-Theoretic Analyses Analyses of common property extraction under "free access" used to assume period-byperiod rent dissipation thus avoiding the use of game theory; more modern analyses instead deduce the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium of the common property game ...

The model presented in this paper distinguishes an industrial and an agricultural sector within a developing economy. Environmental degradation results from the overexploitation of a renewable resource due to a common pool externality, which causes agricultural productivity to decline. The model considers a di erentiated peasantry where land ownership and savings behaviour di er across income c...

This paper develops and tests several models of pure Nash strategies of individuals who extract from a common pool resource when they are motivated by a combination of selfinterest and preferences for altruism, reciprocity, inequity aversion and conformity. Using data from a series of common pool resource experiments conducted in three rural areas of Colombia, we test whether an econometric sum...

The dichotomous choice contingent valuation has been one of the most popular method to estimate Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) for nonmarket goods, such as environmental resources. Standard estimation procedures rely upon fully parametric assumptions on the model. This paper provides a new semiparametric estimation of the WTP distribution, which consists of three steps: In the first step, a finite-di...

We examine the efficiency of conservation of a renewable resource whose natural productivity is influenced by random environmental disturbances. We allow for non-concave biological production and stock-dependent social welfare. Unlike deterministic models, conservation may be inefficient no matter how productive the resource growth function is. In addition, improvements in the natural productiv...

To date, little empirical evidence exists to help regulators understand why some firms comply even when there is little financial incentive to do so and others continually violate environmental regulations. This paper examines data on compliance with environmental regulations within the manufacturing sector in Mexico. The probability of complying depends, among other factors, on the kind of man...

This paper provides general theorems about the control that maximizes the mixed Bentham-Rawls (MBR) criterion for intergenerational justice, which was introduced in Alvarez-Cuadrado and Long (2009). We establish su¢ cient concavity conditions for a candidate trajectory to be optimal and unique. We also show that the state variable is monotonic under rather weak conditions. And …nally we prove t...