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Karl-Goran Maler's work has been a mainstay of the frontiers of
environmental economics for more than three decades. This
outstanding book, in his honour, assembles some of the best minds
in the economics profession to confront and resolve many of the
problems affecting the husbandry of our national environments. This
book investigates many of the recent advances in economics, in
terms of the management of natural resources and environments. The
authors also concentrate on other important issues such as control
theory for non-convex economic problems, duopoly theory, game
theory, local public finance, patent races and population control.
In addition, they investigate the difficulties involved in
constructing environmental agreements, and detail the potential
benefits of marrying together the disciplines of ecology and
economics. As a whole, the book effectively illustrates both the
power and limitations of economics to shed light on many of today's
pressing environmental issues. The diverse range of topics and
exceptional quality of the authors - including contributions by
Nobel Laureates Kenneth J. Arrow and Robert M. Solow - will make
this book essential reading for academics and advanced level
students of environmental and resource economics, as well as
natural scientists with an interest in resource allocation issues.
This is a collection of theoretical papers, including contributions
by Partha Dasgupta and three Nobel prize-winning economists:
Kenneth Arrow, Amartya Sen, and Joseph Stiglitz. Originally
published in 1982.
The rapidly increasing human pressure on the biosphere is pushing
biodiversity into the sixth mass extinction event in the history of
life on Earth. The organisms being exterminated are integral
working parts of our planet's life support system, and their loss
is permanent. Like climate change, this irreversible loss has
potentially devastating consequences for humanity. As we come to
recognise the many ways in which we depend on nature, this can pave
the way for a new ethic that acknowledges the importance of
co-existence between humans and other species. Biological
Extinction features chapters contributed by leading thinkers in
diverse fields of knowledge and practice, including biology,
economics, geology, archaeology, demography, architecture and
intermediate technology. Drawing on examples from various
socio-ecological systems, the book offers new perspectives on the
urgent issue of biological extinction, proposing novel solutions to
the problems that we face.
Economics has the capacity to offer us deep insights into some of
the most formidable problems of life, and offer solutions to them
too. Combining a global approach with examples from everyday life,
Partha Dasgupta describes the lives of two children who live very
different lives in different parts of the world: in the Mid-West
USA and in Ethiopia. He compares the obstacles facing them, and the
processes that shape their lives, their families, and their
futures. He shows how economics uncovers these processes, finds
explanations for them, and how it forms policies and solutions.
Along the way, Dasgupta provides an intelligent and accessible
introduction to key economic factors and concepts such as
individual choices, national policies, efficiency, equity,
development, sustainability, dynamic equilibrium, property rights,
markets, and public goods. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short
Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds
of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books
are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our
expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and
enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly
readable.
A growing awareness of the contribution that technological change
has made and can make to economic and social welfare has brought
science and technology policy to the forefront of public
discussions in both national and international forums. The papers
in this volume, first presented at a Centre for Economic Policy
Research conference held in London in September 1986 on the
Economics of Technology Policy, represent a wide ranging
contribution to the debate. Generally aimed at the non-specialist,
the papers cover both the experience and application of policy as
well as providing in-depth discussions of the rationale for
intervention in the process of technological change. The authors
include both policy-makers (Barber, Ergas and White) and the
academic economists (Dasgupta, David, Griliches, Lyons, Pakes,
Stiglitz and Stoneman). The volume will be of particular interest
to policy-makers and their advisers concerned with
technology-related issues and will contribute significantly to
undergraduate and graduate courses in the same area.
Handbook in Environmental Economics, Volume 4, the latest in this
ongoing series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new
volume presenting timely chapters on Modeling Ecosystems and
Economic Systems, Framing Sustainability Policy Questions: Who
Leads - Ecology or Economics?, Valuing Natural Capital Within an
Integrated Economic Ecological, Developing Economies, Urbanization,
Climate Change and Health, Viewing Environmental Policy Instruments
for Domestic and International Perspective, Quasi experimental
Estimation of Environmental Policies, Environment Macro, The Rules
for Formal and Informal Institutions in Managing Environmental
Resources, and How Should Uncertainty Be Integrated into the
Methods for Policy Evaluation?
How should we evaluate the ethics of procreation, especially the
environmental consequences of reproductive decisions on future
generations, in a resource-constrained world? While demographers,
moral philosophers, and environmental scientists have separately
discussed the implications of population size for sustainability,
no one has attempted to synthesize the concerns and values of these
approaches. The culmination of a half century of engagement with
population ethics, Partha Dasgupta's masterful Time and the
Generations blends economics, philosophy, and ecology to offer an
original lens on the difficult topic of optimum global population.
After offering careful attention to global inequality and the
imbalance of power between men and women, Dasgupta provides
tentative answers to two fundamental questions: What level of
economic activity can our planet support over the long run, and
what does the answer say about optimum population numbers? He
develops a population ethics that can be used to evaluate our
choices and guide our sense of a sustainable global population and
living standards. Structured around a central essay from Dasgupta,
the book also features a foreword from Robert Solow; correspondence
with Kenneth Arrow; incisive commentaries from Joseph Stiglitz,
Eric Maskin, and Scott Barrett; an extended response by the author
to them; and a joint paper with Aisha Dasgupta on inequalities in
reproductive decisions and the idea of reproductive rights. Taken
together, Time and the Generations represents a fascinating
dialogue between world-renowned economists on a central issue of
our time.
Kenneth J. Arrow's pathbreaking "impossibility theorem" was a
watershed innovation in the history of welfare economics, voting
theory, and collective choice, demonstrating that there is no
voting rule that satisfies the four desirable axioms of
decisiveness, consensus, nondictatorship, and independence. In this
book Eric Maskin and Amartya Sen explore the implications of
Arrow's theorem. Sen considers its ongoing utility, exploring the
theorem's value and limitations in relation to recent research on
social reasoning, and Maskin discusses how to design a voting rule
that gets us closer to the ideal-given the impossibility of
achieving the ideal. The volume also contains a contextual
introduction by social choice scholar Prasanta K. Pattanaik and
commentaries from Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kenneth J. Arrow himself,
as well as essays by Maskin, Dasgupta, and Sen outlining the
mathematical proof and framework behind their assertions.
The rapidly increasing human pressure on the biosphere is pushing
biodiversity into the sixth mass extinction event in the history of
life on Earth. The organisms being exterminated are integral
working parts of our planet's life support system, and their loss
is permanent. Like climate change, this irreversible loss has
potentially devastating consequences for humanity. As we come to
recognise the many ways in which we depend on nature, this can pave
the way for a new ethic that acknowledges the importance of
co-existence between humans and other species. Biological
Extinction features chapters contributed by leading thinkers in
diverse fields of knowledge and practice, including biology,
economics, geology, archaeology, demography, architecture and
intermediate technology. Drawing on examples from various
socio-ecological systems, the book offers new perspectives on the
urgent issue of biological extinction, proposing novel solutions to
the problems that we face.
Is knowledge an economic good? Which are the characteristics of the
institutions regulating the production and diffusion of knowledge?
Cumulation of knowledge is a key determinant of economic growth,
but only recently knowledge has moved to the core of economic
analysis. Recent literature also gives profound insights into
events like scientific progress, artistic and craft development
which have been rarely addressed as socio-economic institutions,
being the domain of sociologists and historians rather than
economists. This volume adopts a multidisciplinary approach to
bring knowledge in the focus of attention, as a key economic issue.
Economists often assume that ecosystem and population dynamics
are subject to convex, even linear processes. But research by
ecosystem and population ecologists suggests that such processes
are very often non-convex, for example a possible flip of the Gulf
Stream due to fresh water intrusion from melting glaciers. This has
dramatic implications for environmental and resource economics,
since mistakes in management could prove more costly than
imagined.
Economists often assume that ecosystem and population dynamics
are subject to convex, even linear processes. But research by
ecosystem and population ecologists suggests that such processes
are very often non-convex, for example a possible flip of the Gulf
Stream due to fresh water intrusion from melting glaciers. This has
dramatic implications for environmental and resource economics,
since mistakes in management could prove more costly than
imagined.
This book provides an account of the current understanding of
social capital. It covers both theoretical and empirical studies,
and the concept is debated throughout. Also included in this volume
is the classic 1987 article by the late James Coleman, 'Social
Capital in the Creation of Human Capital', which formed the basis
for the development of social capital as an organizing concept in
the social sciences. The volume is divided into areas that cover
the analytical foundations and institutional and statistical
analyses of social capital.
Is knowledge an economic good? Which are the characteristics of the
institutions regulating the production and diffusion of knowledge?
Cumulation of knowledge is a key determinant of economic growth,
but only recently knowledge has moved to the core of economic
analysis. Recent literature also gives profound insights into
events like scientific progress, artistic and craft development
which have been rarely addressed as socio-economic institutions,
being the domain of sociologists and historians rather than
economists. This volume adopts a multidisciplinary approach to
bring knowledge in the focus of attention, as a key economic issue.
This book is volume 3 of the proceedings of the World Economic
Congress held in Athens in August 1989, under the auspices of the
International Economic Association. It considers various aspects of
economic policy and development faced by countries with different
social, cultural and political systems.;Part 1 deals with
agricultural issues, with an emphasis on public choice theory and
aspects of welfare in various countries, including the USA and the
European Community. In Part 2, food security and nutrition issues
are analyzed, and the problems of achieving sufficient nutrition
levels and sex bias are tackled, with case studies ranging from
sub-Saharan Africa to Bangladesh. Part 3 is devoted primarily to
debt, trade and industrialization issues in developing countries.
Five case studies are presented, concentrating on Latin America and
Africa, and solutions are proposed to intractable problems. Lastly,
in Part 4, development within centrally planned economies is
considered. The four papers in this section provide an up-to-date
assessment of some of the problems of economic transition from
central planning to market economy and the implications for the
role of central government.
In Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment, Partha Dasgupta
explores ways to measure the quality of life. In developing quality
of life indices, he pays particular attention to the natuaral
environment, illustrating how it can be incorporated, more
generally, into economic reasoning in a seamless manner. Such
familiar terms as "sustainable development," "social discount
rates," and Earth's "carrying capacity" are given a firm
theoretical underpinning. The author shows that, whether we are
interested in valuing the state of affairs in a country or in
evaluating economic policy there. The index that should be used is
the economy's wealth, which is the social worth of its capital
assets.
Dasgupta puts the theory he develops to use in extended
commentaries on the economics of population, poverty traps, global
warming, structural adjustment programs, and free trade,
particularly in relation to poor countries. The result is a
treatise that goes beyond quality-of-life measures and offers a
comprehensive account of the newly emergent subject of ecological
economics.
With the publication of this new paperback edition, Dasgupta has
taken the opportunity to update and revise his text in a number of
ways, including developments to facilitate its current use on a
number of graduate courses in environmental and resource economics.
The treatment of the welfare economics of imperfect economies has
been developed using new findings, and the appendix has been
expanded to include applications of the theory to a number of
institutions and to develop approximate formulae for estimating the
value of environmental natural resources.
Transnational commons, cross-border areas without well-defined
property rights, have long been ignored in 'official' development
economics. This volume redresses the balance by adopting an
environmental approach which stresses the importance of shared
natural resources and the links between acute poverty and
environmental degradation. The Economics of Transnational Commons
draws together eminent contributors from fields as diverse as law,
population studies, social anthropology, biological sciences, and
economics, to present authoritative accounts that combine empirical
case-studies with rigorous theoretical foundations. Despite the
milti-disciplinary approach, the main focus of the articles is the
same: that the reciprocal externalities and problems of free-riding
created by any common resource are complicated in the case of
transnational commons by difficulties in monitoring, enforcement,
and unequal access to information. Often using theories of
negotiation taken from game theory, the studies then suggest
possible solutions, both at an institutional and educational level.
In order to make these materials suitable for teaching purposes,
the authors have been encouraged to survey their topics rather than
present their most recent findings. A companion publication, The
Environment and Emerging Development Issues Volumes 1-11 (edited by
Dasgupta and Mahler), deals with national environmental issues.
These volumes present a set of authoritative studies of the role of environmental resources in the economic development process, written by leading scholars in a wide range of associated fields. Contributors address the problems connected with the management of local common property resources, such as soil, water, forests and their products, animals and fisheries, and supply both explanations of existing situations and policies for the future. To provide material that can be used in classroom teaching, the chapters are written as surveys rather than expositions of contributors' most recent work.
An interdisciplinary book by one of the most respected scholars in what is broadly development economics but encompasses the most recent insights from philosophical research and empirical work on resource allocation, nutrition science, and anthropology. It has been widely recognized as a seminal work presenting a wide-ranging description of the causes and remedies of poverty and undernourishment, and addressing the current debate over methods of estimating their incidence.
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