This article considers the challenges for efforts to introduce environmental quality into modern macro models. These models describe the economy as a dynamic general equilibrium, often using a representative agent to characterize consumers. Macro models are calibrated using a composite of...

Since 1982, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has used benefit-cost analysis to evaluate many of its surface water quality regulations. Early regulations were aimed at controlling conventional and toxic pollutants that were directly linked to highly visible water quality problems. More...

Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) are one of the property rights instruments that have been employed to improve economic efficiency in fisheries. ITQs are not high-quality property rights in the basic fundamental marine resources on which fisheries are based. As a result ITQs cannot be...

Coastal and marine ecosystems (CMEs) generate some of the most important services to humankind, but they are endangered from overexploitation and loss. The widespread decline in CME services suggests that it is important to understand what is at stake in terms of the critical benefits and values...

I review the concept of sustainability and the various approaches to quantifying it. My focus is on the role that natural capital plays in supporting human welfare, the extent to which there are substitutes for it in this role, and how this is reflected in sustainability measures. Copyright...

Over the past five decades, the U.S. government has enacted laws and developed regulations to respond to actual and threatened releases of hazardous substances. This article describes a relatively understudied component of the nation's response capability: the Superfund Emergency Response and...

The most recent stage in the evolution of fisheries management institutions has been the adoption of so-called rights-based management schemes that grant secure rights of access to users so they are not forced to compete wastefully under open access conditions. The most common rights-based...

Increasing levels of fisheries collapse are now widely believed to be the consequence of ineffective centralized management of the common pool. In theory, realigning incentives for ecologically sustainable and economically prosperous fisheries requires assigning property rights to the resource,...

In this article we discuss the mechanics of linking different types of climate change policies and identify areas where linkage will be difficult. Our goal is to identify opportunities for constructive linkage and policy choices that may limit or hinder linkage. We argue that the basic approach...

Building on a review of experience in the United States and the European Union, this article advances four main propositions concerning policies aimed at increasing electricity generation from renewable energy. First, who bears the short-run costs of programs to subsidize the generation of...