Environmental Economics
by Charles D. Kolstad · Charles Kolstad
Graduate-level treatment of pollution control, externalities, and regulatory design, assuming intermediate microeconomics. Covers market failure, incentive-based instruments versus standards, and both revealed- and stated-preference methods for valuing environmental quality, with the theory behind each estimate.
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More resources on Environmental Economics
rff.org
Resources for the Future (RFF) is a leading think tank focused on environmental and resource economics. The site hosts rigorous research on climate, energy, water, and natural resources, along with policy briefs, working papers, data tools, events, and expert analysis.
Underpriced and Overused: Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data 2025 Update
IMF working paper estimating global fossil fuel subsidies, splitting explicit price gaps from implicit costs of untaxed pollution and congestion. Comes with a country-by-country dataset, so you can see which fuels and which economies carry the largest gaps.
Public policies against global warming: a supply side approach
Sinn's paper introducing the green paradox: if resource owners anticipate future carbon policy, they accelerate extraction today, so demand-side measures can raise near-term emissions unless supply-side instruments or a rising carbon tax are used instead.
Global Warming and the Green Paradox: A Review of Adverse Effects of Climate Policies
A review distinguishing the weak green paradox, where emissions merely shift forward in time, from the strong version where cumulative damage rises, and identifying the extraction costs, reserve heterogeneity and tax designs that neutralise the effect.
Agriculture, Economics and Nature
University of Western Australia course on the economics of farming and its environmental effects: supply and prices, input decisions and production functions, land conservation, cost-benefit analysis of agri-environmental projects, and farm policy. Learners can evaluate farm and policy decisions with basic economic models.
EPA Economics Page
The EPA's hub for regulatory economic analysis: guidelines for cost-benefit studies, mortality risk valuation, CGE models, and National Center for Environmental Economics working papers. Shows how US agencies actually price environmental damages and benefits.