Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents in Brief -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- 1 Visions of the Future -- Introduction -- The Self-Extinction Premise -- EXAMPLE 1.1 A Tale of Two Cultures -- Future Environmental Challenges -- Climate Change -- Water Accessibility -- Meeting the Challenges -- How Will Societies Respond? -- The Role of Economics -- DEBATE 1.1 Ecological Economics versus Environmental Economics -- The Use of Models -- EXAMPLE 1.2 Experimental Economics: Studying Human Behavior in a Laboratory -- The Road Ahead -- The Issues

DEBATE 1.2 What Does the Future Hold? -- An Overview of the Book -- Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Self-Test Exercise -- Further Reading -- 2 The Economic Approach: Property Rights, Externalities, and Environmental Problems -- Introduction -- The Human-Environment Relationship -- The Environment as an Asset -- The Economic Approach -- EXAMPLE 2.1 Economic Impacts of Reducing Hazardous Pollutant Emissions from Iron and Steel Foundries -- Environmental Problems and Economic Efficiency -- Static Efficiency -- Property Rights -- Property Rights and Efficient Market Allocations

Efficient Property Rights Structures -- Producer's Surplus, Scarcity Rent, and Long-Run Competitive Equilibrium -- Externalities as a Source of Market Failure -- The Concept Introduced -- Types of Externalities -- EXAMPLE 2.2 Shrimp Farming Externalities in Thailand -- Perverse Incentives Arising from Some Property Right Structures -- Public Goods -- Imperfect Market Structures -- EXAMPLE 2.3 Public Goods Privately Provided: The Nature Conservancy -- Asymmetric Information -- Government Failure -- The Pursuit of Efficiency

Private Resolution through Negotiation-Property, Liability and the Coase Theorem -- Legislative and Executive Regulation -- EXAMPLE 2.4 Can Eco-Certification Make a Difference? Organic Costa Rican Coffee -- An Efficient Role for Government -- Summary -- Discussion Questions -- Self-Test Exercises -- Further Reading -- 3 Evaluating Trade-Offs: Benefit-Cost Analysis and Other Decision-Making Metrics -- Introduction -- Normative Criteria for Decision Making -- Evaluating Predefined Options: Benefit-Cost Analysis -- Finding the Optimal Outcome -- Relating Optimality to Efficiency

Comparing Benefits and Costs across Time -- Dynamic Efficiency -- Applying the Concepts -- Pollution Control -- Estimating Benefits of Carbon Dioxide Emission Reductions -- EXAMPLE 3.1 Does Reducing Pollution Make Economic Sense? Evidence from the Clean Air Act -- EXAMPLE 3.2 Using the Social Cost of Capital: The DOE Microwave Oven Rule -- Issues in Benefit Estimation -- Approaches to Cost Estimation -- The Treatment of Risk -- Distribution of Benefits and Costs -- Choosing the Discount Rate -- EXAMPLE 3.3 The Importance of the Discount Rate -- Divergence of Social and Private Discount Rates

DEBATE 3.1 Discounting over Long Time Horizons: Should Discount Rates Decline?

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