Allen V. Kneese

The economics of environmental policy

Knowledge and analyses are drawn from a broad range of experts to depict the problem of environmental quality as an economic problem whose resolution requires major changes in economic, political, and legal institutions. The model emphasizes the principle of materials balance in developing public policy which uses these interconnections as a framework. Viewed as an economic problem, environmental degradation is the result of the failure of the market system to efficiently allocate environmental resources among their alternative uses. The governments primary concern is to preserve competition and assure that the distribution of income meets the societys ethical standards, but the market system fails to work for common property resources. The problem of designing institutions for collective action that can efficiently manage common property environmental resources is analyzed. The need to bring environmental resources back into the economic system so that their use can be subject to the same sorts of constraints influencing the use of other resources (land, labor, and capital) is emphasized.

Environmental Quality and International Trade

Environmental problems are currently a matter of international interest and concern for a wide variety of reasons ranging from those which are rather general and even vague to others which are concrete and sometimes very pressing.1 There are, hopefully, more than a few people who are concerned about the welfare of their fellow man wherever he may be; moreover, there is an evident feeling of “one-worldness†resulting from an increasing degree of interdependence in several spheres, including the economic and the cultural. Further, the developed countries feel that they can learn useful lessons from one another about how to cope with environmental problems which are quite similar from country to country. These problems usually result from high population densities combined with large and rapidly growing per capita production and consumption which are often brought about by the use of technologies that generate large amounts of destructive residual materials. There is also an almost universal absence of satisfactory institutions for collective management of a number of “common property resources†including the air mantle, watercourses, and other large ecological systems.

Natural resources policy 1975-1985

Abstract Natural resources policy in the United States is a matter for deep concern. It is inconsistent, often outdated, and grossly overdependent on direct regulation vis-a-vis adjustments in the defective system of economic incentives. This policy also fails to recognize the tight web of interdependences among all resource problems, including those of environmental resources. This paper explores these interdependencies and develops a coherent program of natural resources policies. The chief elements are reduced reliance on direct regulation, increased reliance on economic incentives, measures to cancel unfavorable distributive effects, measures to improve the competitiveness and performance of the natural resource industries, and reorganization of both legislative and administrative branches of government.