The book interprets nature and the environment as a scarce resource. It offers a theoretical study of the allocation problem and describes different policy approaches to the environmental problem. The entire spectrum of the allocation issue is studied: the use of the environment in a static context, international and trade aspects of environmental allocation, regional dimensions, global environmental media, environmental use over time and under uncertainty. The book incorporates a variety of economic approaches, including neoclassical analysis, the public-goods approach, benefit-cost analysis, property-rights ideas, economic policy and public-finance reasoning, international trade theory, regional science, optimization theory, and risk analysis. The different aspects of environmental allocation are studied in the context of a single model that is used through the book.
List of Figures and Tables
Pt. I Introduction 1
Ch. 1 The Problem 3
Ch. 2 Using the Environment - An Allocation Problem 7
Pt. II Static Allocation Aspect 25
Ch. 3 Production Theory and Transformation Space 27
Ch. 4 Optimal Environmental Use 43
Ch. 5 Environmental Quality as a Public Good 59
Ch. 6 Property-Rights Approach to the Environmental Problem 97
Pt. III Environmental-Policy Instruments 105
Ch. 7 Incidence of an Emission Tax 107
Ch. 8 Policy Instruments 127
Ch. 9 Policy Instruments and the Casuistics of Pollution 153
Ch. 10 The Political Economy of Environmental Scarcity 163
Pt. IV Environmental Allocation in Space 171
Ch. 11 Environmental Endowment, Competitiveness and Trade 173
Ch. 12 Transfrontier Pollution 195
Ch. 13 Global Environmental Media 209
Ch. 14 Regional Aspects of Environmental Allocation 229
Pt. V Environmental Allocation in Time and Under Uncertainty 249
Ch. 15 Long-Term Aspects of Environmental Quality 251
Ch. 16 Economic Growth, Sustainability, and Environmental Quality 267
Ch. 17 Risk and Environmental Allocation 285
Bibliography