A dual representation of a technology, e.g. a cost function, may not contain all of the technological information, but it will contain all of the information about input vectors that would be chosen by a cost-minimizing rm. At least this much is clear for deterministic technologies. The main

The paper questions the standard economic assumptions that competing economic agents have identical reservation utility levels, and that when differences in opportunity costs exit, they can be conveniently represented by fixed costs. Opportunity costs are endogenized by linking them to current

Climate change is a serious and urgent problem, so we must spend our money on the most cost effective solutions. The idea that we need every energy technology implies we have unlimited funds which is nonsense. Nuclear power is probably the most expensive method of carbon abatement we could choose

ecosystems

Two general algorithms based on opportunity costs are given for approximating a revenue maximizing set of bids an auctioneer should accept, in a combinatorial auction in which each bidder offers a price for some subset of the available goods and the auctioneer can only accept non-intersecting bids

The interests and incentives of managers and shareholders conflict over such issues as the optimal size of the firm and the payment of cash to shareholders. These conflicts are especially severe in firms with large free cash flows—more cash than profitable investment opportunities. The theory

Surveys by Ferraro and Taylor (2005) point to abysmal understandings of the concept of opportunity cost by US faculty, graduates and undergraduates. Given that opportunity cost is widely believed to be fundamental to economic thinking, this empirical evidence raises important teaching

This paper provides evidence that free riders are heavily punished even if punishment is costly and does not provide any material benefits for the punisher. The more free riders negatively deviate from the group standard the more they are punished. As a consequence, the existence of an opportunity

Several term papers prepared by graduate students enrolled in Agricultural and Applied Economics 8-264 in the Fall of 1973 were of excellent quality. Because of their value to students of resource economics problems, several of these are being issued in the Staff Paper Series of the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. This paper by William H. Meyers tackles a difficult but relevant and important problem for developing countries--estimating the shadow price for labor in a labor-surplus economy. The first two papers in

This paper investigates the relationship between defense spending and economic growth for the G-7 nations during the years 1964-1965. Using a two-way, fixed effects regression model, time series and cross-sections are pooled. The percentage change in real GDP is assumed to be a function of the percentage of GDP devoted to military spending and the percentage change in population. Results indicate a statistically significant, inverse relationship between defense spending and economic growth. If the percentage of GDP spent on defense spending increases by one percentage point, economic growth decreases by almost 1.3 percentage points. F-tests indicate the two-way, fixed effects model is superior to both the one-way, fixed effects model or the random effects model. I.