The economics of the environment and natural resources: Applied problems related to the design of policies using market-based instruments.
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abstract
Economists have long been interested in finding an efficient way to achieve environmental objectives and, more recently, also with ensuring economic sustainability. Since Crocker (1966) and Dales (1968), there has been significant interest in the use of market-based instruments to achieve these objectives. Yet there remains much unknown about how these instruments can be designed. There has been substantial literature on the use of transferable rights is vast; it ranges from pollution (e.g., Tietenberg, 1980; Stavins, 1995, Evans and Woodward, 2013), to fisheries (e.g. Repetto, 2001, Arnason, 2007). However, like boats passing in the night, for the most part there has been little overlap in the separate literatures with little cross pollination. Such cross-media analysis would be useful when considering new transferable rights programs.This project will carry out economic analysis of policies to address environmental and natural resource management problems at the state, national and international scale. The application of market-based programs to water quality, for example, is increasingly used across the nation (USEPA, 2010), yet there has been relatively little empirical analysis of these programs. The research carried out under this project will seek to develop conceptual and empirical insights into how market-based instruments can be most effective in achieving society's environmental goals. The insights generated by the work carried out under this proposal will, therefore, benefit at all levels of government.The primary goals of the research program is to study the theoretical and empirical properties of market-based mechanisms for environmental and resource management, considering their efficient design and new applications
