First written in 1977, Economics of Natural and Environmental Resources presents a collection of articles written in exploration of the economic, social, and ecological problems peculiar to natural and environmental resources. Whilst focusing on the economic theory of natural resources, the contributions also consider geological, technological, and institutional features of particular resources. Policy implications and considerations are central to the text and although the book was published over thirty years ago, the issues discussed remain relevant to today’s society.
A book on the economics of exhaustible resources requires no justification. A long book does. The purist will find disquieting our two-asset, constant population model with which we analyse growth possibilities in an economy with exhaustible resources.
In 1985 I first began my research on the life and work of Harold Hotel ling. That year, Harold Hotelling's widow had donated the collection of his private p:;tpers, correspondence and manuscripts to the Butler Library, Columbia University. This is a most appropriate place for them to reside, in that Hotelling's most productive period as an active researcher in eco nomics and statistics coincides with the years when he was Professor of Mathematical Economics at Columbia (1931-1946). The Hotelling Collection comprises some 13,000 separate items and contains numerous unpublished letters and manuscripts of great importance to historians of economics and statistics. In the course of the following year I was able, with the generous financial assistance of the Nuffield Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy and the University of Durham, to spend six weeks over the Easter period working on the collection. I returned to New York in September 1986 while on sabbatical leave from the University of Durham, and I spent most of the following eight months examining the many documents in the collection. During that academic year I was grateful to Columbia University who gave me the title of Visiting Research Professor and gave me the freedom to work in their many well-stocked libraries.
Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics brings together a choice selection of some of the most enduring academic writing published in this field in a single volume. The fourteen papers included in this book are grouped into five sections: the intertemporal problem; externalities and market failure; property rights; institutions and public choice; the economics of exhaustible resources; and the economics of renewable resources. Each section represents a major area in natural resource economics. Written by distinguished resource economists, the papers in this volume probe, analyze and illuminate the central issues of the discipline.
This study, first published in 1979, continues by examining the question of whether a competitive economy can efficiently allocate a stock of non-renewable natural resources through time. Long-run analyses of competitive economies with such resources have concluded that, without perfect foresight or a complete set of future markets extending infinitely far into the future, there is no economic mechanism to guarantee that the initial price is set so that the economy converges to the socially desirable path of balanced growth. This title will be of interest to students of environmental and natural resource economics.
Originally published in 1979. While the theory of non-renewable resources under competitive and monopolistic market regimes have been relatively well developed, almost no attention has been given to the development of a theoretical framework for analysis of the spectrum of mixed market structure between those extremes. The world oil market structure is an example of such an intermediate market structure. The purpose of this title is to develop such a theoretical framework. The study examines non-renewable resource markets in which a profit maximizing producer cartel co-exists with a non-cartel supply sector, which is alternately modelled as consisting of a collection of competitive firms or as exhibiting other exogenously assumed supply behaviours. This title will be of interest to students of environmental economics.
This collection brings together leading economists from around the world to explore key issues in economic analysis and the history of economic thought. This book deals with important themes in economics in terms of an approach that has its roots in the works of the classical economists from Adam Smith to David Ricardo. The chapters have been inspired by the work of Neri Salvadori, who has made key contributions in various areas including the theory of production, the theory of value and distribution, the theory of economic growth, as well as the theory of renewable and deplorable natural resources. The main themes in this book include production, value and distribution; endogenous economic growth; renewable and exhaustible natural resources; capital and profits; oligopolistic competition; effective demand and capacity utilization; financial regulation; and themes in the history of economic analysis. Several of the contributions are closely related to the works of Neri Salvadori. This is demonstrated with respect to important contemporary topics including the sources of economic growth, the role of exhaustible resources in economic development, the reduction and disposal of waste, the redistribution of income and wealth, and the regulation of an inherently unstable financial sector. All contributions are brand new, original and concise, written by leading exponents in their field of expertise. Together this volume represents an invaluable contribution to economic analysis and the history of economic thought. This book is suitable for those who study economic theory and its history, political economy as well as philosophy.
