This title was first published in 2001. This wide-ranging and comprehensive collection investigates the background to environmental economic development over the last thirty years, and the political implications of new directions resulting from technological and cultural changes in environmental issues. It examines the application of economic analysis to environmental problems in the past and solutions to the current issues of water, soil, air, energy, waste and urban ecology, discussing the implications of political decisions, cultural changes and technological constraints. It will prove a stimulating resource for students, academics, researchers and policy-makers alike.

EXPAND YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF HOW ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AFFECTS BUSINESS, THE ECONOMY, AND YOUR LIFE WITH THIS ESSENTIAL RESOURCE Environmental Policy: An Economic Perspective offers readers a comprehensive examination of the ever-broadening scope and impact of environmental policy, law, and regulation. Editors Thomas Walker, Northrop Sprung-Much, and Sherif Goubran walk readers through a variety of subjects while maintaining a global perspective on the expanding role of environmental law. This book takes a pragmatic and practical approach to its subject matter, showing readers the real impact across the world of different kinds of environmental policy. Among other topics, Environmental Policy: An Economic Perspective tackles: Climate change legislation Water conservation and pricing Biodiversity of the marine environment Wildlife ranching Emission trading schemes Green job strategies Sustainable investing Written for undergraduate and graduate students in any field affected by environmental legislation and policy, this book also belongs on the shelves of anyone who seeks to better understand the increasingly important role of environmental policy on their business and life.

'This is an excellent piece of work, applying the economic theory of property rights and transaction costs to the complex policy problems associated with water use in irrigation. Challen examines the determination of transaction costs and the way they interact with a realistic specification of property rights. He thereby avoids the two main defects found in much work in this area: first, the use of a simplistic division of property rights schemes, for example one based on polar categories of private property and common property, defined to mean open access, and second, a tendency to use the category of transaction costs as an unexamined "black box".' - John Quiggin, James Cook University, Australia 'A most encouraging trend in economics concerns the careful and non-teleological study of institutions. From an era in which institutions were completely ignored, through an era in which it was thought that institutions were mere constraints on otherwise beneficent behavior in markets, through an era in which it was thought that the purpose of institutions was to promote economic efficiency, we now seem to be firmly in an era in which it is understood that institutions are the very bedrock of economic and social interaction. The analysis of institutions will fall into incoherence if we insist on seeing them as teleological rather than as instrumental. Once there, we must still understand the purposes that different individuals and collectivities ascribe to particular institutional set ups. In this careful book Ray Challen offers clear conceptual guidance to the study of economic institutions. He also shows us how one can undertake the analysis of institutional choice. The problem setting is water resources in eastern Australia. The lessons are profoundly international, and the approach is refreshingly promising.' - Daniel W. Bromley, University of Wisconsin-Madison, US Conventional economic analysis of property rights in natural resources is too narrow and restrictive to allow for effective comparisons between alternative institutional structures. In this book, a conceptual framework is developed for the analysis of these structures with illustrative application to the allocation of water resources.

With the growing number, complexity, and importance of environmental problems come demands to include a full range of intellectual disciplines and scholarly traditions to help define and eventually manage such problems more effectively. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities is the result of a 2-year effort by 12 social and behavioral scientists, scholars, and practitioners. The report sets research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences as they relate to several different kinds of environmental problems.

This volume presents six new papers on environmental and energy economics and policy in the United States. Rebecca Davis, J. Scott Holladay, and Charles Sims analyze recent trends in and forecasts of coal-fired power plant retirements with and without new climate policy. Severin Borenstein and James Bushnell examine the efficiency of pricing for electricity, natural gas, and gasoline. James Archsmith, Erich Muehlegger, and David Rapson provide a prospective analysis of future pathways for electric vehicle adoption. Kenneth Gillingham considers the consequences of such pathways for the design of fuel vehicle economy standards. Frank Wolak investigates the long-term resource adequacy in wholesale electricity markets with significant intermittent renewables. Finally, Barbara Annicchiarico, Stefano Carattini, Carolyn Fischer, and Garth Heutel review the state of research on the interactions between business cycles and environmental policy.

This title was first published in 2001. This wide-ranging and comprehensive collection investigates the background to environmental economic development over the last thirty years, and the political implications of new directions resulting from technological and cultural changes in environmental issues. It examines the application of economic analysis to environmental problems in the past and solutions to the current issues of water, soil, air, energy, waste and urban ecology, discussing the implications of political decisions, cultural changes and technological constraints. It will prove a stimulating resource for students, academics, researchers and policy-makers alike.

This thoughtful collection exposes the gap between rhetoric and performance in Canada's response to environmental challenges. Canadians, despite their national penchant for environmental discussion, have fallen behind their G-8 peers in both domestic commitments and international actions. In a cogent examination of the issue, eight authors demonstrate how Canada's configuration of political and economic institutions has limited effective environmental policy. Canadian environmental institutions, the authors argue, have produced an integrity gap: the sustainability rhetoric adopted by policymakers fails to achieve concrete results. In an analysis that penetrates several policy domains and combines various disciplinary, sectoral, and geographic perspectives, the authors demonstrate how Canada fell from leader to laggard within the international environmental community. Placing the study of Canadian environmental policy within a sound theoretical framework for the first time, this book makes a significant contribution to existing policy scholarship. It will find an enthusiastic audience among political scientists, neo-institutional theorists, policy analysts, and students at both unde

An analysis of the economic theory of environmental policy and the factors influencing the quality of life. Recent research in environmental economics is incorporated as well as economic incentives for pollution control.

Has globalization led to a convergence in policy-making across nations and, if so, what are the causal mechanisms? This book analyses the extent to which the environmental policies of nation states have converged over the last thirty years and whether this convergence has led to a strengthening or weakening of environmental standards (a race to the top, or a race to the bottom). It also analyses the factors that account for these developments. Based on a unique empirical data set, the study covers the development of a wide range of environmental policies in twenty-four OECD countries, including EU member states as well as Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Mexico and the USA, with particular emphasis on the impact of institutional and economic interlinkages among these countries.