The book interprets nature and the environment as a scarce resource. It offers a theoretical study of the allocation problem and describes different policy approaches to the environmental problem. The entire spectrum of the allocation issue is studied: the use of the environment in a static context, international and trade aspects of environmental allocation, regional dimensions, global environmental media, environmental use over time and under uncertainty.
The book incorporates a variety of economic approaches, including neoclassical analysis, the public-goods approach, benefit-cost analysis, property-rights ideas, economic policy and public-finance reasoning, international trade theory, regional science, optimization theory, and risk analysis. The different aspects of environmental allocation are studied in the context of a single model that is used through the book.
Introduction: The Problem.- Using the Environment - An Allocation Problem.- Static Allocation Aspect: Production Theory and Transformation Space.- Optimal Environmental Use.- Environmental Quality as a Public Good.- Property-Rights Approach to the Environmental Problem.- Environmental-Policy Instruments: Incidence of an Emission Tax.- Policy Instruments.- Policy Instruments and the Casuistics of Pollution.- The Political Economy of Environmental Scarcity.- Environmental Allocation in Space: Environmental Endowment, Competitiveness and Trade.- Transfrontier Pollution.- Global Environmental Media.- Regional Aspects of Environmental Allocation.- Environmental Allocation in Time and under Uncertainty: Long-Term Aspects of Environmental Quality.- Economic Growth, Sustainability and Environmental Quality.- Risk and Environmental Allocation.