Ecological Economics: Principles
of Economic Policy Design
for Ecosystem Management
| 1. | Introduction |
| 2. | Ecological modeling and resource dynamics |
| 3. | Economic modeling for ecosystem management |
| 4. | Instruments of economic policy and policy design |
Ecological economics studies the interactions and coevolution in time and space between ecosystems and human economies. The rate at which humans exploit or harvest ecosystems services exceeds what might be regarded as a desirable level from society’s point of view. The consequences of this overexploitation are well known (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss and extinction of species, collapse of fisheries, overexploitation of water resources). The objective of designing economic policy is to develop a system of regulatory instruments so that the state of the regulated ecosystems will converge toward the socially desirable outcome. The purpose of this chapter is to present an approach describing how economic policies might be designed to achieve this objective.
control variable. A variable whose values can be chosen by a decision maker in order to affect the path of the state variables.
ecological economics. The study of the interactions and coevolution in time and space between ecosystems and human economies.
economic policy. The intervention by a regulator through policy instruments in private markets so that a desired market outcome is attained.
externality. An externality is present when the wellbeing (utility) of an individual or the production possibilities of a firm are directly affected by the actions of another agent in the economy.
internalization of an externality. A situation in which the agent who generates the externality bears the cost that the externality imposes on other agents.
market failure. A market failure exists when competitive markets fail to attain Pareto optimum.
Pareto optimum. A situation in which it is not possible to make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
production function. A real-valued function that shows the maximum amount of output that can be produced for any given combination of inputs.
public good. A commodity for which use of one unit of the good by one agent does not preclude its use by other agents.
state variable. A variable that characterizes the state of a system at any point in time and space.
utility function. A real-valued function that shows that if a consumer prefers the bundle of goods x to the bundle of goods y, then the utility of x is greater than the utility of y.
Ecological economics studies the interactions and coevolution in time and space between ecosystems and human economies. Human economies in the process of their operation and development use the flows of services generated by ecosystems. In using these services, humans make decisions about the size and the time profile of the harvested flows of ecosystems services as
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: The Princeton Guide to Ecology.
Contributors: Simon A. Levin - Editor.
Publisher: Princeton University Press.
Place of publication: Princeton, NJ.
Publication year: 2012.
Page number: 740.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.
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