J.J. Krabbe – författare

This study looks at the roots of German legacy historistic and organistic economic thought, gives a survey of its development and indicates the present-day significance of these ideas. This approach is also of significance for today's institutional economics, and for the field of environmental and resource economics. In this book these fields of study are referred to in various ways. Essentially, some new ideas appear to be rather old and, what amounts to the same, some old ideas appear to be topical. This is particularly true of the "historical approach" to the economy, with its idea of development. It is also true of the organistic approach, which is largely tied up with it. The point of departure is my study on· the G. erman Historical School, published in Dutch in 1983. The scope of the following work, however, is broader, as it also refers to the evolution of historically oriented and organistically oriented economic thought in general. Thus, a number of authors who did not think along the lines of the Historical School are included. For instance, the organically oriented ideas of Menger and Georgescu-Roegen are also examined, as well as the ideas of those who were among the "Institutionalists" and other present-day writers in this field. This study is supported by various publications by other writers. A great part of the literature under consideration is in German.

Since the 'environmental revolution' began in the late 1960s, economists have done a lot of work in the field of economic theory-building on the preservation of nature. Meanwhile, environmental economic literature has swelled to a large stream of articles in journals of different signature. As a result, a coherent economic view of the phenomenon ofenvironmental degradation has emerged. Several kinds of 'green' public policies and their impacts on both nature and the performance of the economy have been analysed. The feasibility ofspecific types of policy has also been discussed. The aim of the book is to provide an insight into the ways economists analyse the problems ofenvironmental pollution and the depletion ofnatural resource. To this purpose a number of articles have been selected. Some of them have a fundamental character, others an applied nature and are foremost, practically oriented. The presentation of the collection emphasizes our belief that economists are able to deliver an essential contribution to the design of policies to protect nature. It is clear that 'nature' and 'environment' may no longer be regarded as 'free gifts' to society. Rather, they have to be seen as scarce resources, and environmental disruption and resource depletion as allocation problems. Ifa natural resource is scarce, a price must be charged in accordance with the degree ofscarcity since otherwise society will be confronted with misallocations. In this connection there are two topics which are of particular interest to economists.