Methods for Valuing Environmental Costs and Benefits

Abstract

THE ECONOMY AND THE ENVIRONMENT: TWO PARTS OF A WHOLE: Interlinkages between the economy and the environment -- The first two laws of thermodynamics -- MARKET FAILURE: Incomplete markets -- Externalities -- Non-exclusion and the commons -- Non-rivalry and public goods -- Non-convexities -- Asymmetric information -- ECONOMIC INCENTIVES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: AN OVERVIEW: Price rationing: charges and subsidies -- Liability rules: non-compliance fees, bonds, and deposit refunds -- Quantity rationing: marketable permits -- Evaluative criteria -- Practical conditions for use of economic incentives -- POLLUTION TAXES FOR THE EFFICIENT CONTROL OF POLLUTION: Efficiency properties of a tax on emissions -- Problems with pollution taxes -- TRADEABLE POLLUTION PERMITS: The basic theory of tradeable pollution permits -- Research issues in tradeable permit markets -- TRANSBOUNDARY POLLUTION PROBLEMS: Transboundary pollution as a problem of international externalities -- Transboundary pollution and game theory -- AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ECONOMICS OF NATURAL RESOURCE EXPLOITATION: Elementary capital theory -- The maximum principle of optimal control theory -- The application of the maximum principle to specific fishery management problems -- The discrete-time maximum principle and dynamic programming -- Wiener processes, Ito's processes and stochastic calculus -- NATURAL RESOURCES: TYPES, CLASSIFICATION AND SCARCITY: Natural resource types and classification -- Measuring resource scarcity -- AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF NON-RENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCES: Market structure and the exploitation of non-renewable resources -- Production technology and extraction costs -- Applying the theory -- Government policy towards non-renewable resource taxation -- Uncertainty and the rate of resource extraction -- RENEWABLE RESOURCE ECONOMICS: Population growth models -- Static models of fishery exploitation in continuous time -- Static economic models of fisheries -- Comparative dynamic models of fishing -- Fisheries policy -- Applying the theory and the discrete-time model -- Extending the theoretical model -- Strategic behaviour in fishery management -- Fishing under uncertainty -- THE ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY EXPLOITATION: The principles of commercial forestry economics -- Multi-use forestry and the socially optimal forest rotation -- Forestry land use and agriculture -- Forest policies -- The optimal forest rotation under uncertainty -- THE THEORY OF NON-MARKET VALUATION: Measures of economic value -- Valuing risk and ex ante measures of value -- Issues in non-market valuation -- METHODS FOR VALUING ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS AND BENEFITS: Direct methods of valuation -- Indirect methods of valuation -- THE ECONOMICS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Possible sustainability rules -- Indicators of sustainability -- The Common-Perrings model of sustainable development.