Economics has played an increasingly important role in shaping policy, in the United States and elsewhere. This chapter reviews some of the dimensions of the economic approach to analyzing, understanding, and developing solutions to the problem of climate change. We then turn to the issue of...

The conservation of biodiversity is a major environmental issue, one that promises to remain at or near the top of the environmental agenda for the foreseeable future. The loss of biodiversity affects human welfare as well as being lamentable for its own sake. Humans depend on natural systems to...

This chapter presents the theory of international environmental agreements (IEAs). It explains what treaties do (or should do); when and why they succeed or fail; and whether they can be designed better. It focuses on the main questions that the literature on this topic has tried to answer,...

The 1990s produced a large literature on foreign trade and the environment, including both theoretical and empirical contributions. The paper surveys this literature. It starts by looking at the traditional Heckscher–Ohlin type models of international trade and then moves to noncompetitive...

This chapter seeks to understand the linkages between non-environmental polices and the environment, with a particular focus on taxation and subsidies. In order to understand the quite complex literature on this subject, we draw on the theory of the second best and the theory of optimal...

Decisions concerning environmental protection hinge on estimates of economic burden. Over the past 30 years, economists have developed and applied various tools to measure this burden. In this chapter, we present a taxonomy of costs along with methods for measuring those costs. At the broadest...

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling is an attempt to use general equilibrium theory as a tool for analysis of resource allocation and income distribution issues in market economies. Since the beginning of the 1990s, CGE modeling has been widely used for analysis of environmental policy...

Environmental pollution is introduced both as a joint product and as a source of disutility in growth models. The purpose is to explore vital questions such as: is environmental protection compatible with economic growth; is it possible to have sustained growth in the long run without...

In this chapter, we review the concept of national income and the economic theory of national income accounting. There are two building blocks – the ideas of Fisher, Lindahl, Hicks about income as an expenditure level that can be continued into the future, and the concept of income as a...

I review the complex welfare economic issues that arise in environmental decision-making over very long periods, as in cases relating to climate change and biodiversity loss. I also consider the issues that arise in choosing a discount rate to apply to very long-run projects and indicate how...