Resource and environmental economics

This book presents the major themes of the economic literature on natural re sources and the environment. It is designed to bring the reader, in part with the aid of a unified model of optimal resource use, to the frontiers of the discipline, using only elementary mathematical models. Features special to exhaustible and renewable resources, including the problems posed by market imperfections, are treated as extensions of the basic model. The theoretical discussion is enriched with examples and applications, including a systematic investigation of the be havior of resource reserves, costs, prices, and substitution possibilities.

Substantial attention to environmental, as well as extractive, resources is a distinctive aspect of this book. The author describes methods of estimating the environmental costs of resource development and other projects, and presents some key empirical findings. Policy instruments to protect the environment, such as taxes, subsidies, marketable permits, and direct controls, are carefully analyzed from a welfare-theoretic point of view.

The twin guiding principles of the book are to develop concepts and methods to the point where the reader can begin to penetrate the specialized literature and to do so in an informal, intuitive, and, above all, understandable fashion. This book is therefore ideally suited to economists and others concerned with re source and environmental issues, including graduate and upper-division under graduate students, who seek a concrete, balanced introduction to a vigorously expanding new field.