R. David Simpson - Böcker

Examines a problem of growing concern and importance: obtaining accurate estimates of the ecological costs of human activities. This text covers a range of subjects, from the management and function of ecosystems to ecological issues affecting public policy. It focuses on the trade-offs inherent in environmental and conservation policy. Ecosystems provide resources that can be extracted and are valued in the market place, but the delivery of those resources depends on the functioning of natural processes whose maintenance may involve substantial costs. The book discusses the fundamental structure and behaviour of ecosystems and evaluates the tools employed by economists to value ecosystem goods and services not commonly bought and sold in existing markets. In addition, it examines the possible use of ecological risk assessment to link ecological and economic approaches. This text should be of interest to ecologists, foresters, geographers, natural resource economists, park managers and graduate students.

Several senior natural resource analysts study the role played by innovation, particularly technological innovation, in the pursuit of heightened productivity. Increasing the output of a given input improves a firm‘s bottom line, makes it more competitive internationally, and reduces the potential for resource depletion and shortages. Thus, high productivity is a necessary ingredient of economic prosperity. This book illustrates the importance of technological innovation in achieving an acceptable level of output and efficiency. In this important new offering, a team of resource scholars describes and chronicles the development of recent innovations in selected natural resource industries. The authors also reveal the causes, sources, and net effect of such innovation on productivity. In all of these sectors productivity has increased considerably since the early 1980s, although the level of improvement varies across industries. To what degree did technological innovation contribute to that increase? Individual detailed case studies detail important innovations in America‘s coal, petroleum, copper, and forest industries. The primary focus is on extraction and production technologies, although the existence and importance of innovation in other areas such as management technique also enter the picture. For example, the combination of new technology with restructuring seems to have breathed new life into a floundering U.S. copper industry. The authors describe the origin and diffusion of important innovation, and the concluding chapter quantifies the net effect of such innovation on productivity.

In this volume, a group of distinguished international scholars provides a fresh investigation of the most fundamental issues involved in our dependence on natural resources. In Scarcity and Growth (RFF, 1963) and Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered (RFF, 1979), researchers considered the long-term implications of resource scarcity for economic growth and human well-being. Scarcity and Growth Revisited examines these implications with 25 years of new learning and experience. It finds that concerns about resource scarcity have changed in essential ways. In contrast with the earlier preoccupation with the adequacy of fuel, mineral, and agricultural resources and the efficiency by which they are allocated, the greatest concern today is about the Earth‘s limited capacity to handle the environmental consequences of resource extraction and use. Opinion among scholars is divided on the ability of technological innovation to ameliorate this 'new scarcity.' However, even the book‘s more optimistic authors agree that the problems will not be successfully overcome without significant advances in the legal, financial, and other social institutions that protect the environment and support technical innovation. Scarcity and Growth Revisited incorporates expert perspectives from the physical and life sciences, as well as economics. It includes issues confronting the developing world as well as industrialized societies. The book begins with a review of the debate about scarcity and economic growth and a review of current assessments of natural resource availability and consumption. The twelve chapters that follow provide an accessible, lively, and authoritative update to an enduring-but changing-debate.