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"Back to Burgundy" is a French film directed by Cedric Klapisch that tells the story of a multigenerational family inheriting a vineyard and winery in Burgundy. The film explores the tensions within the family and between families as they navigate the inheritance and the payment of inheritance tax. The movie delves into the complexities of winemaking in Burgundy and the love and appreciation for the land that comes with running a family vineyard. The film also touches on themes of patrimony, primogeniture, and the personal conflicts and relationships of the siblings. Ultimately, the film resolves the conflicts and conundrums of the characters, leading to a happy ending. [Extracted from the article]

The winemaking technique of saignée is common for some varietals, and the ensuing flavor profiles have been carefully analyzed by oenologists. However, we argue that saignée is fundamentally about economic tradeoffs between the quantity of primary wine that is ultimately produced, the quality (and thus, price) of that wine, and the amount of rosé wine that is bled off in the process. We develop the first theoretically-grounded economic model of saignée and analyze the model to shed light on the winemaker's optimal choice of saignée, and on the properties of wine and wine markets that should empirically give rise to more, or less, saignée. The model helps to explain several real-world regularities such as the absence of saignée for most Bordeaux wines, the specialization in rosé for many wines in Provence, and the practice of moderate amounts of saignée for varietals such as grenache and pinot noir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2006.08.001 Byline: Charles D. Kolstad (a)(b) Keywords: Climate change; International environmental agreements; Voluntary provision of public goods; Treaties; Uncertainty; Learning Abstract: This paper addresses the subject of self-enforcing international environmental agreements (IEAs). The standard model of IEAs is adapted to include uncertainty in environmental costs and benefits, as well as learning about these costs and benefits. The paper investigates the extent to which the size of the coalition changes as a result of learning and systematic uncertainty (also known as model uncertainty). Results are that systematic uncertainty by itself decreases the size of an IEA. Learning has the further effect of either increasing or decreasing the size of an IEA, depending on parameters of the problem. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Economics and Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA (b) University Fellow, Resources for the Future, Washington, DC, USA Article History: Received 15 September 2005 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This paper has benefited from comment from two anonymous referees, Brian Copeland, Ita Falk, Michael Finus, Don Fullerton, Andy King, Eric Orts, Rohini Somanathan, Eswaran Somanathan, Samudra Vijay, David Zilberman and from seminar participants at Dartmouth College, Harvard University, North Carolina State University, Yale University, the Delhi School of Economics, the Indian Institute of Management (Calcutta), the Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi), the Madras School of Economics, and the Universities of Central Florida, Connecticut, Wyoming, and Leuven (Belgium). I am particularly grateful to Alistair Ulph of the University of Manchester for many discussions early on and throughout the development of this paper. In fact, the model presented her is derived from a model in Ulph and that intellectual debt should be recognized. Furthermore, Prof. Ulph perceptively pointed out a flaw in a result which no longer appears in this paper.

After withdrawing from Kyoto Protocol in March 2001, Bush Administration has presented a proposal for decreasing the intensity of US greenhouse gas emissions. Intensity is defined as emissions per unit of GDP. A model showing the effectiveness of this environment policy vis-a-vis economic growth is discussed.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2005.02.003 Byline: David L. Kelly (a), Charles D. Kolstad (b)(c), Glenn T. Mitchell (d) Abstract: The paper is concerned with the case whereby the distribution of a firm's productivity shocks changes without the knowledge of the firm. Over time the firm learns about the nature and extent of the change in the distribution of the shock and adjusts, incurring adjustment costs in the process. The long-run loss in profits ([+ or -]) due to the shift in the distribution we term the equilibrium response. The transitory loss in profits, incurred while the firm is learning about the distribution shift, is termed the adjustment cost. The theory is then applied to the problem of measuring adjustment costs in the face of imperfectly observed climate change in agriculture. The empirical part of the paper involves estimating a restricted profit function for agricultural land in a five-state region of the Midwest US as a function of prices, land characteristics, actual weather realizations and expected weather. We then simulate the effect of an unobserved climate shock, where learning about the climate shock is by observing the weather and updating prior knowledge using Bayes Rule. We find adjustment costs to climate change are 1.4% of annual land rents. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Economics, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248126, Coral Gables, FL 33134, USA (b) Department of Economics, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA (c) University Fellow, Resources for the Future, Washington DC, USA (d) LECG, Los Angeles, CA 90071, USA Article History: Received 5 June 2003

The controversy on whether the nature of greenhouse gas emissions and sunk control costs affect the decision-making process on the control of greenhouse gases is examined in a stochastic growth model. Factors considered in the model include the net present value of utility, consumption identity, production function, damage from climate change and sunk nature of abatement. It is concluded that there was no significant relationship between greenhouse gas accumulation and the stock effect and that there is a small stock effect related to sunk control capital.

The conflicting irreversibilities associated with the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the accumulation of pollution control equipment to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases were examined. The use of a stochastic version of a climate change policy model showed that substantial control capital irreversibility exists, while environmental irreversibility is nonexistent or at least does not affect policy decisions. It is suggested that climate change policy use incentives rather than technological controls. The tentative nature of such incentives should be emphasized to achieve greater compliance.

Hotelling's model for resource rents of exhaustible resources becomes modified to explain the market's characteristics when two resources are present. Rents are dependent on costs, demand and stock of the both the resource and its resource which is not its perfect substitute. Monopolies do not contribute to the conservation of the substitute goods even if the main resource is conserved. Also, different grades of a resource are produced or used at the same time.

This article reviews methods that use historical data on weather, climate, economic activity, and other variables to statistically measure the effect of climate on economic outcomes. This has been an active area of research for several decades, with many recent developments and discussions in the literature concerning the best way to estimate climate damages. The article first presents a conceptual framework for estimating the costs of climate change impacts. It then examines several approaches proposed in the literature that use historical weather data to econometrically estimate climate change impacts. These include cross section, linear and nonlinear panel methods, long differences, and partitioning variation. For each approach we describe the type of impacts (short-run versus long-run) estimated, the type of weather or climate variation used (e.g., cross-sectional, time-series, or a combination of the two using panel data), and the advantages and disadvantages of the approach. We conclude with a summary of our findings and priorities for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Olsen Bjerkholt and Vislie Bjerkholt, Recent Modelling Approaches in Applied Energy Economics (New York, NY: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1990), 268 pages. It is refreshing to see an edited volume [...]