We present a restriction on the domain of individual preferences that is both necessary and sufficient for the existence of a social choice rule that is continuous, anonymous, and respects unanimity. The restriction is that the space of preferences be contractible. Contractibility admits a...

Oil price behavior has changed dramatically in the last twenty years. These changes can be explained rather simply in terms of the delayed responses of supply and demand to prices, and in terms of changes in the rate of discovery of reserves. This analysis can be used to forecast possible future...

Our concern in this paper is to analyze the optimal long-run pricing policies of oil-exporting countries. These might be described briefly as the policies which best meet their objectives, subject to the various limitations imposed on them by the realities of world economic forces.

Although American business leaders do not like protectionism, more and more of them are concluding that too many countries are stacking the deck against American competitors. The severe recession of 1980-83 and its lingering effects in certain regions and business sectors; unemployment stuck at...

An important problem in environmental economics arises from te irreversibility of consuming or destroying certain resources. Extractive resources like oil are a clear example. Even for environmental resources the same seems to be true in a number of environmental cases, for example biodiversity,...

We consider an economy which imports energy from a monopolistic price-setter. The domestic general equilibrium of this economy adjusts in response to the price of energy. We define the total cross price elasticity of demand between energy and capital as the cross price elasticity across general...

Ws use growth models with natural resources to study the con- sequences of a ranking of intertemporal paths, due to Chichilnisky, which places weight on their very long run or limiting characteristics as well as on their characteristics over any finite period. This criterion shows more...

The paper studies a two-region economy , with two sectors and three factors of production : oil, capital and labor . The South exports oil in exchange for industrial goods from the North . There is a net capital inflow to the South . This equals the difference between its export revenues and...

We consider here optimal use patterns for renewable resources and address the problem of optimal use of renewable resources under a variety of assumptions both about the nature of the economy in which these resources are embedded and about the objective of that economy. Although we focus here on...

This paper reviews a range of issues relating to tradable carbon dioxide quotas. It considers the economic principles on which they are based, compares them with alternative carbon abatement policies, and reviews many aspects of how tradable quotas would be implemented in practice.