Economics for Environmental Studies

Alfred Endres � Volker Radke Economics for Environmental Studies A Strategic Guide to Micro- and Macroeconomics Alfred Endres University of Hagen Hagen Germany Volker Radke Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Ravensburg Ravensburg Germany Additional material to this book can be downloaded from http://extra.springer.com ISSN 2192-4333 ISSN 2192-4341 (electronic) ISBN 978-3-642-31192-5 ISBN 978-3-642-31193-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-31193-2 Springer Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2012946349 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 This work is subject to copyright. 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Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer-ScienceþBusiness Media (www.springer.com) Acknowledgements The authors of the present textbook have been teaching economics for environmen-tal studies for many years within the interdisciplinary distance learning program in environmental sciences INFERNUM. INFERNUM (Interdisziplinares Fernstudium Umweltwissenschaften) is a “Joint Venture” of the University of Hagen, Germany, and the Fraunhofer Institut for Environmental, Safety, and Energy Technology (UMSICHT), Germany. The authors would like to thank Professor Helmut Breitmeier, University of Hagen, and the other colleagues for the wonderful cooperation, and generations of INFERNUM students for making smart remarks and asking uncomfortable questions. All of this enabled us to write a better textbook. (Of course, whether we succeeded to write a good one can only be decided by its readers.) Parts of this book were written while Alfred Endres was a visiting scholar at La Trobe University, Melbourne. This author is indebted to the economics department of La Trobe for its hospitality, and to the University of Hagen for granting a sabbatical. Special thanks go to Professors Joanna Poyago-Theotoky and Robert Waschik of La Trobe. The authors would also like to thank Gabriele Debray, Daniel Limpinsel, and Vanessa Kuhn, University of Hagen, for providing excellent technical support and for dealing patiently with the somewhat erratic working style of the authors. Vanessa Kuhn also assessed the manuscript from a student’s perspective and provided many helpful comments. Moreover, the help of Wendy Smith and Daragh Mc Greal, Graduate School of Law and Economics at the University of Hamburg, is gratefully acknowledged. These native English speakers checked the style of the original draft of the manuscript. They corrected numerous Germanisms and were quite amused about the sometimes humorous tone of the manuscript. Among the many jokes which may entertain the readers and make learning more comfortable, they identified a few involuntary ones with their eagle eyes and eliminated them. Finally, the authors would like to thank Dr. Martina Bihn, Barbara Feß and Marion Kreisel, Springer Verlag, for accompanying the manuscript from the first idea to the final product with moral support and technical advice so smoothly that the whole process was a pure pleasure for the authors. v vi Acknowledgements All in all, there was so much support granted by other people that little work remained to be done by the authors – best of all worlds. Alfred Endres University of Hagen Volker Radke Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Ravensburg P.S. Good news for economics lecturers: to facilitate the use of the present textbook as a teaching tool, Power Point slides are available on www.springer.com/ 978-3-642-31192-5. Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Part I Economics: What Is It About and How Does It Relate to the Natural Environment? 2 The Fundamental Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.1 Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.2 Goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.1 Satisfying Human Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.2 Commodities and Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.3 Excludability and Rivalry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.3 Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.4 Scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 3 The Economic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.1 Acting Economically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.2 Economic Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 3.3 The Circular Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.4 Positive and Normative Economic Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3.5 Economic Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.5.1 The Choice of Economic System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.5.2 Interventions in the Economic Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4 Integration of the Natural Environment: Socially Undesirable Utilization of Natural Goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4.1 Introductory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4.2 Natural Goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4.3 Production Based on Natural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.4 The Circular Flow and the Natural Environment . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.5 Normative Analysis: Efficiency, Justice, and the Natural Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 vii ... - tailieumienphi.vn