In the secretary problem of Cayley (1875) and Moser (1956), n non-negative, independent, random variables with common distribution are sequentially presented to a decision maker who decides when to stop and collect the most recent realization. The goal is to maximize the expected value of the collected element. In the k-choice variant, the decision maker is allowed to make kď n selections to ma...

Credible and optimal monetary policies are considered in environments in which the government observes a signal that is correlated with the state of the economy. When the signal is public information it is optimal for monetary policy to be conditioned upon it. The extent to which such conditioning should occur when the signal is the private information of the government depends upon the governm...

This study reports the effects of rebate rules on voluntary contributions to a threshold public good. Rebate rules specify how excess contributions, over the threshold amount are distributed. We examine three rebate rules experimentally: a no rebate policy where excess contributions are discarded, a proportional rebate policy where excess contributions are rebated proportionally to an individua...

In recent years there has been a growing interest in mathematical models for routing in networks in which the decisions are taken in a non-cooperative way. Instead of a single decision maker (that may represent the network) that chooses the routes so as to maximize a global utility, one considers a number of decision makers having each its own utility to maximize by routing its own flow. This g...

This paper discusses how a benevolent policy maker should act based on some, possibly nonwelfaristic, ethical principle in cases where people's preferences are not perfectly informed, consistent and fully developed with regard to all goods, including all kinds of environmental goods, as is normally assumed in mainstream economic theory. When stated or revealed preferences do not reflect the max...

About NUTNET NUTNET is a network that aims to improve the management of soil fertility in Africa. It is a partnership of fifteen organisations from six African and two European countries: About Enhancing soil fertility in Africa: from field to policy-maker (NAGREF) from Greece. It is funded by the International Cooperation for Development (INCO) programme of the European Union, which links ongo...

Block replacement policy is a type of preventive replacement policies where the units are always replaced at failure or at a scheduled time periodically. Assuming the lifetimes of the units are uncertain variables, this paper studies the block replacement policy in an uncertain environment. To deal with the different constraints a decision maker may face, three different criterions are used to ...