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 full effects of decisions made today about many environmental policies -including climate change and nuclear waste- will not be felt for many years. For issues with long-term ramifications, analysts often employ discount rates to compare present and future costs and benefits. This is reasonable, and discounting has become a procedure that raises few objections. But are the methods appropriate for measuring costs and benefits for decisions that will have impacts 20 to 30 years from now the right ones to employ for a future that lies 200 to 300 years in the future? This landmark book argues that methods reasonable for measuring gains and losses for a generation into the future may not be appropriate when applied to a longer span of time. Paul Portney and John Weyant have assembled some of the world's foremost economists to reconsider the purpose, ethical implications, and application of discounting in light of recent research and current policy concerns. These experts note reasons why conventional calculations involved in discounting are undermined when considering costs and benefits in the distant future, including uncertainty about the values and preferences of future generations, and uncertainties about available technologies. Rather than simply disassemble current methodologies, the contributors examine innovations that will make discounting a more compelling tool for policy choices that influence the distant future. They discuss the combination of a high shout-term with a low long-term diescount rate, explore discounting according to more than one set of anticipated preferences for the future, and outline alternatives involving simultaneous consideration of valuation, discounting and political acceptability.

This book was published in 2003.The "International Library of Environmental Economics and Policy" explores the influence of economics on the development of environmental and natural resource policy. In a series of 25 volumes, the most significant journal essays in key areas of contemporary environmental and resource policy are collected. Scholars who are recognized for their expertise and contribution to the literature in the various research areas serve as volume editors and write essays that provides the context for the collection. Volumes in the series reflect three broad strands of economic research including: natural and environmental resources; policy instruments and institutions; and methodology. The editors, in their introduction to each volume, provide a state-of-the-art overview of the topic and explain the influence and relevance of the collected papers on the development of policy. This reference series provides access to the economic literature that has shaped contemporary perspectives on land use analysis and policy.

The social cost of carbon (SC-CO2) is an economic metric intended to provide a comprehensive estimate of the net damages - that is, the monetized value of the net impacts, both negative and positive - from the global climate change that results from a small (1-metric ton) increase in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. Under Executive Orders regarding regulatory impact analysis and as required by a court ruling, the U.S. government has since 2008 used estimates of the SC-CO2 in federal rulemakings to value the costs and benefits associated with changes in CO2 emissions. In 2010, the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG) developed a methodology for estimating the SC-CO2 across a range of assumptions about future socioeconomic and physical earth systems. Valuing Climate Changes examines potential approaches, along with their relative merits and challenges, for a comprehensive update to the current methodology. This publication also recommends near- and longer-term research priorities to ensure that the SC- CO2 estimates reflect the best available science.

The social discount rate measures the rate at which a society would be willing to trade present for future consumption. As such it is one of the most critical inputs needed for cost-benefit analysis. This paper presents estimates of the social discount rates for nine Latin American countries. It is argued that if the recent track record in terms of growth in the region is indicative of future performance, estimates of the social discount rate would be in the 3-4 percent range. However, to the extent that the region improves on its past performance, the social discount rate to be used in the evaluation of projects would increase to the 5-7 percent range. The paper also argues that if the social planner gives a similar chance to the low and high growth scenario, the discount rate should be dependent on the horizon of the project, declining from 4.4 percent for a 25-year horizon to less than 4 percent for a 100-year horizon.

Today, the judge, the citizen, the politician, and the entrepreneur are concerned with the sustainability of our development.

Forest resources are an ideal starting point for economic analysis of sustainability. In this book, leading economists discuss key aspects of sustainability and sustainable forest management including complexity, ethical issues, consumer choice theory, intergenerational equity, non-convexities, and multiple equilibria. This systematic critique of neoclassical economic approaches is followed by a companion work, Institutions, Sustainability, and Natural Resources: Institutions for Sustainable Forest Management, Volume 2 in the series.

Often described as a public policy “bible,” Weimer and Vining remains the essential primer it ever was. Now in its sixth edition, Policy Analysis provides a strong conceptual foundation of the rationales for and the limitations to public policy. It offers practical advice about how to do policy analysis, but goes a bit deeper to demonstrate the application of advanced analytical techniques through the use of case studies. Updates to this edition include: A chapter dedicated to distinguishing between policy analysis, policy research, stakeholder analysis, and research about the policy process. An extensively updated chapter on policy problems as market and governmental failure that explores the popularity of Uber and its consequences. The presentation of a property rights perspective in the chapter on government supply to help show the goal tensions that arise from mixed ownership. An entirely new chapter on performing analysis from the perspective of a public agency and a particular program within the agency’s portfolio: public agency strategic analysis (PASA). A substantially rewritten chapter on cost–benefit analysis, to better prepare students to become producers and consumers of the types of cost–benefit analyses they will encounter in regulatory analysis and social policy careers. A new introductory case with a debriefing that provides advice to help students immediately begin work on their own projects. Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practices remains a comprehensive, serious, and rich introduction to policy analysis for students in public policy, public administration, and business programs.

As the Kyoto conference of the parties on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change once again underscored, man-made climate change has become one of the major challenges to our generation and many generations to come. Since scientific evidence on climate change can be seen as increasingly reliable, the focus of our attention has to turn more and more to the question of foreseeable damages and to possibilities to prevent and mitigate climate change. In other words, we need to analyse the economic aspects of man marle climate change and the policy options to prevent its most severe impacts. This book reports on the findings of an international workshop on these aspects of global climate change. It was organised by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, Germany on March 6th and 7th 1997. In the light of the ongoing international policy-making process on climate change, we decided to publish the report after the Kyoto conference from December Ist to 10th, 1997, to include the results of the conference, which emphasise the importance of economic aspects and economic policy options when it comes to addressing the problern of man-made climate change. Thus, this book went to press in February 1998 the moment we received the official version of the Kyoto Protocol, which is reproduced in the annex.