Environmental Economics 101

The Environmental Economics blog is dedicated to the dissemination of economists’ views on current environmental and natural resource issues. We hope this blog will help bring economists’ views on environmental issues further into the mainstream. The intended audience includes the general public and students. Posts are non-technical.

We aim to fill the gap between traditional academic journals and the general interest press by providing a widely accessible yet UNscholarly source for [slightly uninformed] thinking on environmental economics and related policy.

Quote of the Year:

"The right wing always suspects you of being a tree-hugging environmentalist and the left wing accuses you of being a money-grubbing capitalist." Source: WSJ.

Primers:

• Supply and Demand
• Negative externality (i.e., the economic analysis of pollution)
• An emissions tax
• Carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade
• Benefit-cost analysis
• Tax Burden: Part 1 | Part 2

Recommended Readings:

• Harris, Michael, Environmental Economics, Australian Economic Review, 1996 [PDF]

Stavins' first dozen columns:

• The Myth of the Universal Market
• The Myth of Simple Market Solutions
• The Myths of Market Prices and Efficiency
• A Tale of Two Taxes, A Challenge to the Hill
• A Better Climate Change Agreement
• Markets Can Make Fisheries Sustainable
• Regulating by Vintage
• The Making of a Conventional Wisdom
• What Baseball Can Teach Policymakers
• Does Econ Analysis Shortchange the Future
• Some Straight Talk Needed About CSR
• A Utility Safety Valve for Cutting CO2