The private sector plays an increasing and relevant role in highway funding and management. For that reason, the regulation designed and enforced by public authorities becomes even more important for the social welfare results generated by this process. In this study, we analyze the current trends in highway funding and management paying special attention on the recent process of privatization ...

Pinpointing and safeguarding the welfare status of domestic cats is problematic, especially in New Zealand where cats are introduced predators with significant impact on indigenous fauna. Usually the identification of welfare status depends on conservational, legal, and public attitudes that are often contrasting. Cats may rapidly transgress definitions placed on them, confounding attempts to c...

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...

− Future society must be utopia in which every constituent can share equal welfare. In particular, it should be a society where the elderly and the physically handicapped can lead their lives happily along with the normal. In order to realize such a welfare-driven society, it is essential to build an infrastructure with a variety of facilities based on advanced technology or devices and systems...

Human-wildlife conflict is a global issue. Attempts to manage this conflict impact upon wild animal welfare, an issue receiving little attention until relatively recently. Where human activities harm animal welfare these effects should be minimised where possible. However, little is known about the welfare impacts of different wildlife management interventions, and opinions on impacts vary wide...

When productivity is fostered by both the individual’s human capital and by the average level of human capital in the economy, individuals under-invest in human capital. A strictly positive probability of migration to a richer country, by raising both the level of human capital formed by optimizing individuals in the home country and the average level of human capital of non-migrants in the cou...

Recent social science research on the American public’s attitudes toward the welfare of food animals tracks closely with a difficult-to-resolve philosophical issue. One side interprets welfare in terms of the way that a given animal is faring in a production setting. This view emphasizes the animal’s medical condition and cognitive well-being. The other view derives norms for welfare from a con...

Society is increasingly concerned about health and welfare of farm animals. The origin of that concern seems to be a lack of transparency and reliable information about the way in which animal-based food products are actually produced. In order to include these aspects in animal production and achieve safe market products for human health resulting from welfare friendly systems [1], producers n...

Recent social science research on the American public's attitudes toward the welfare of food animals tracks closely with a difficult-to-resolve philosophical issue. One side interprets welfare in terms of the way that a given animal is faring in a production setting. This view emphasizes the animal's medical condition and cognitive well-being. The other view derives norms for welfare from a con...