Rüdiger Pethig - Böcker

During the last decades, environmental economics as a science has been very successful in improving our understanding of environment-economy interdepen­ dence. Using conventional economic methodology, environmental aspects have been explicitly incorporated into economic models making use of the concept of externality. This concept was already familiar to economists long before evidence of severe environmental deterioration found its way into the headlines and peo­ ple's awareness. But before that time, external effects were not considered as being empirically very relevant, they seemed to be -like the example of the bees and the fruit trees - somewhat bucolic in nature. All that changed dramatically when it was no longer possible (or easy) to ignore the large-scale environmental disruption with its negative feedback on consumers and producers caused by growing pollution and excessive use of environmental resources. In diagnosing the discrepancy between private and social cost as the cause of the problem, the externality paradigm proved very useful. The correct diagnosis implies the straightforward cure to internalise all external cost, namely the damage cost of pollution. But it is one thing to identify the qualitative nature of the problem at an abstract conceptual level and quite another thing to place specific money values on pollution damage and society's valuation of the environment, respectively, in the context of specific pollution (control) problems. Very often it is controversial not only how inefficient the no-policy situation is but also what exactly the net benefit of any public action of reducing pollution is.

This volume, in a sense, aims at reflecting the qualities of the honoree and it does so in two respects. On the one hand, it covers a great variety of subdisciplines of economics. On the other hand, the book ranges from theoretical and mathematical economics to hands-on applied analyses of economic-policy issues. All essays are driven by the aspiration to better understand the economy and to draw relevant conclusions for economic policy. The book is divided into five parts dealing with the German economy, European economic issues, global markets, international trade theory and policy, and natural resources and the environment.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference at Freudenberg, Germany, that brought together some forty (environmental) economists from seven European countries and the U.S. in November 1990 to analy:se "Conflicts and Cooperation in Managing Environmental Resources". I should like to thank the Volkswagen-Stiftung whose finan- cial support made this conference possible. Additional funding by the Forschungsinstitut fur Geistes-und Sozialwissenschaften at the Universitiit - Gesamthochschule Siegen is also gratefully acknowledged. The papers and formal comments published in this volume emerged from those presented at Freudenberg. Thorough and competent discussions during and after the conference as well as an anonymous reviewing process led to major revisions which im- proved the quality of all contributions. I am grateful to the authors for their construc- tive collaboration before and during the conference as well as during the editing process.The authors demonstrated convincingly that they are not only able to scrutinise the inefficiencies of non-eooperation in their research work, but that they also succeeded to learn this lesson by avoiding delays of the editing process at the expense of the remain- ing players.

This volume, in a sense, aims at reflecting the qualities of the honoree and it does so in two respects. On the one hand, it covers a great variety of subdisciplines of economics. On the other hand, the book ranges from theoretical and mathematical economics to hands-on applied analyses of economic-policy issues. All essays are driven by the aspiration to better understand the economy and to draw relevant conclusions for economic policy. The book is divided into five parts dealing with the German economy, European economic issues, global markets, international trade theory and policy, and natural resources and the environment.

In a neoclassical world the existence of non-zero transaction costs, nonconvex technologies, public goods and so on creates inefficiencies which can be dealt with by various institutions. But, institutions can create inefficiencies of their own. This volume addresses the issue of efficiency and institutions from different angles. First, the efficiency of modern welfare states is analyzed on a general level where topics like social justice, redistribution and rent seeking are studied in an environment of pressure groups and self-interested politicians (papers by Streit, Schlieper, Wickstrom). Second, several papers deal with more specific issues like intergenerational transfers in a social insurance system, the efficiency of law, and contractual arrangements in the labor market (Witt, Rowley and Brough, Monissen and Wenger). Third, allocation procedures for nonexclusive public goods are analyzed (Guth and Hellwig, Pethig).