Over the past two decades, environmental and resource economics has evolved from what was once a relatively obscure application of welfare economics to a prominent field of economics in its own right. The number of articles on the natural environment appearing in mainstream economics periodicals has continued to increase, as has the number of economics journals dedicated exclusively to environm...

Recent advances in evolutionary theory have some important implications for environmental economics. A short overview is offered of evolutionary thinking in economics. Subsequently, major concepts and approaches in evolutionary biology and evolutionary economics are presented and compared. Attention is devoted, among others, to Darwinian selection, punctuated equilibrium, sorting mechanisms, La...

Environmental economics has made numerous contributions to both the theory and the applied problems surrounding pollution control. Given that the primary benefits of controlling most pollutants are health benefits, there is a close link between human health and environmental economics. One of the most important contributions that economics has made to the problem of pollution control is to clar...

Disclosure strategies, which involve public and/or private attempts to increase the availability of information on pollution, form the basis for what some have called the third wave in pollution control policy (after legal regulation--the first wave--and market-based instruments --the second wave). While these strategies have become commonplace in natural resource settings (forest certification...

This dissertation is generally interested in policy and pollution-relevant questions within the field of environmental economics, focusing either on regulated firms' behavior or individuals' reactions. The first chapter focuses on one regulatory policy aimed at decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and its impact on the firm it is regulating. In order to increase the use of renewable energy for e...

Evolutionary and environmental economics have a potentially close relationship. This paper reviews past and identifies potential applications of evolutionary concepts and methods to environmental economics. This covers a number of themes: resource use and ecosystem management; growth and environmental resources; economic and evolutionary progress; and individual behavior and environmental polic...