This book is a collection of Amitrajeet A Batabyal's most important papers on the environment and economic development. This book's uniqueness stems from the fact that it uses novel modeling tools that are largely unfamiliar to economists to shed valuable light on contemporary problems at the interface of the environment and economic development.
This book is a collection of Amitrajeet A Batabyal''s most important papers on the environment and economic development. It begins with a comprehensive and previously unpublished introductory chapter, followed by 12 chapters on different problems such as land use for agricultural purposes, environmental policy design, flood control, and renewable resource management. This book''s uniqueness stems from the fact that it uses novel modeling tools that are largely unfamiliar to economists to shed valuable light on contemporary problems at the interface of the environment and economic development. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Introduction to Dynamic and Stochastic Approaches to the Environment and Economic Development (127 KB). Contents: Introduction: Introduction to Dynamic and Stochastic Approaches to the Environment and Economic Development; Agriculture: Swidden Agriculture in Developing Countries (with H Beladi); Aspects of Land Use in Slash and Burn Agriculture (with D M Lee); Renewable Resources: Renewable Resource Management in Developing Countries: How Long Until Crisis? (with H Beladi); A Stackelberg Game Model of Trade in Renewable Resources with Competitive Sellers (with H Beladi); A Differential Game Theoretic Analysis of International Trade in Renewable Resources (with H Beladi); Environmental Policy: Dynamic Environmental Policy in Developing Countries with a Dual Economy (with D M Lee); A Dynamic Analysis of Protection and Environmental Policy in a Small Trading Developing Country (with H Beladi); Aspects of the Theory of Environmental Policy in Developing Countries (with H Beladi); and other papers. Readership: Researchers and graduate students in environmental and developmental economics, industry professionals at OC think tanksOCO and resource and development organizations.
The book presents new developments in the dynamic modeling and optimization methods in environmental economics and provides a huge range of applications dealing with the economics of natural resources, the impacts of climate change and of environmental pollution, and respective policy measures. The interrelationship between economic activities and environmental quality, the development of cleaner technologies, the switch from fossil to renewable resources and the proper use of policy instruments play an important role along the path towards a sustainable future. Biological, physical and economic processes are naturally involved in the subject, and postulate the main modelling, simulation and decision-making tools: the methods of dynamic optimization and dynamic games.
of ecological (also biological) variables b which interact in their dynamic t evolution: det dbt dt = f (et, bt)' dt = 9 (et, bt)· Among the solution paths to this interaction between economic and ecologi cal variables, we look for those which are sustainable. Sustainable paths are typically those along which the values of certain key stocks are always pos itive, these key stocks being important environmental resources. The types of paths on which certain variables can be positive forever include station ary solutions with appropriate positivity conditions, or limit cycles or chaotic attractors satisfying the same positivity conditions. These paths, and the paths which approach them, constitute the set of sustainable paths. From amongst these we have to choose one or more which are in some sense the best. Note that rather than imposing positivity of certain stocks in the long run as a condition for sustainability, we would prefer to derive this as a characteristic of optimal solutions from more fundamental judgements about the valuation of stocks and flows: this is the route pursued by the papers in this volume. The introductory paper by Heal in Section I reviews these matters in gen eral terms, not going into technical details: it discusses the precedents for a concept of sustainability in welfare economics, and reviews alternative opti mality concepts and their connection to sustainability.
This book should interest all students and scholars of environmental economics and particularly those interested in the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality.
The chapters in the book cover a broad range of aspects regarding the relationship between natural resource use and long-term economic development. The book surveys existing literature as well as adds to frontier research. In particular, the following topics are studied: incentives for adoption and diffusion of clean technology, resource scarcity and limits to growth, international convergence of energy intensity, and the social norms shaping resource depletion.
In this landmark set of papers, experts from around the world present the latest and most promising approaches to both the theory and practice of effective environmental management. To achieve sustainable development, organizations and individual citizens must comply with environmental laws and regulations. Accordingly, a major contribution of this book is the presentation of original techniques for designing effective environmental policies, regulations, inspection precedures and monitoring systems. Interesting methods for modelling risk and decision making problems are discussed from an environmental management perspective. Moreover, knowledge-based techniques for handling environmental problems are also investigated. Finally, the last main part of the book describes optimal approaches to reservoir operation and control that take into account appropriate multiple objectives. Audience The book is of direct interest to researchers, teachers, students and practitioners concerned with the latest developments in environmental management and sustainable development.
This book is the second edition of a text based on a report commissioned by the Swedish International Development Authority (SID A). The financial grant from SIDA which made the work possible is hereby gratefully acknowledged. There are already many books on the market about environmental economics, some of them very good. What is special about this one? We do not claim to have obtained new results, but we have our own way of presenting the subject matter. In particular, we are of the opinion that policy failures are often overlooked as an obstacle to efficient environmental management. Although the main emphasis in this book is on project level analysis, it is essential that such analyses be linked to an understanding of the (dis)incentives for environmental improvements that general economic and particular environmental policies provide. Another essential feature of the book, although this is not unique, is the links provided between theory and empirical illustrations. We hope that this will illustrate to our readers the practical usefulness, but also the difficulties, of applying economics to environmental problems. In particular we hope that the text can be of interest to decision-makers, development programme personnel, teachers and the general public interested in how economics can contribute to better environmental decision-making. In principle, this book can be read by anyone interested in the subject matter, without any formal education in economics. However, some background in microeconomic theory makes the reading easier.
Exploiting econometric techniques aimed at dealing with the dynamics of economic systems and the heterogeneity of agents performances, the volume integrates innovation-based reasoning with ex-post analyses, and presents ex-ante analyses able to evaluate the role of climate change policies by using computable general equilibrium models such as the Global Trade Analysis Project for Energy (GTAP-E). The authors merge and use a range of datasets, including OECD-PATSTAT and STAN, to test novel techniques informed by evolutionary economic theories and the Porter hypothesis. The immediate relevance and applicability of the models will strengthen the hand of policy analysts for whom the dynamic efficiency of environmental policy is a new, high-profile evaluation criterion.
Written in a way that facilitates understanding of complex concepts, laws, and policy, Production, Growth, and the Environment: An Economic Approach explores how economic growth usually makes people better off, but also asks at what environmental cost? These costs are not often realized until after the fact, when their remediation is more expensive, and sometimes not reversible. Very few books on environmental economics model the joint production of desirable and undesirable outcomes in any depth. This book fills that void. It discusses the demographic transition and the escape from the Malthusian trap. It also covers the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis that examines the relation between polluting outputs and economic welfare. The book integrates environmental valuation methods with the production possibility frontier (PPF) approach. It presents both types of outcomes in a PPF framework that accounts for scarcity and allows the concepts of technical and allocative efficiencies to be introduced and measured. The PPF can then measure technological progress/regress and can be used to measure whether resource use is sustainable over time. It can also be used to determine shadow prices for non-market desirable outputs such as ecological services and non-market undesirable by-products such as SO2, NOx, and CO2 that arise from fossil fuel combustion. The beauty of the PPF framework is that it can be depicted in simple two-dimensional diagrams that make the concepts easy to understand. The author uses this framework to introduce concepts such as technical efficiency, allocative efficiency, technological progress/regress, shadow pricing, externalities, public goods, pollution taxes, and permits. In addition, each chapter has numerous problems and discussion questions that provide examples and practice in using the introduced theories. The book also includes a chapter that shows how the solver routine in Excel can be used to measure technical and allocative efficiency. This gives you the tools to examine all outcomes and therefore make a decision that takes into account the environmental challenges along with any economic benefits.
