Suchergebnisse

This paper is about net national product (NNP). We are concerned with what NNP means, what it should include, what it offers us and, therefore, why we may be interested in it. We show that NNP, properly defined, can be used to evaluate economic policies, but we also show that it should not be used in any of its more customary roles, such as in making intertemporal and cross-country comparisons of social well-being. We develop such indices as would be appropriate for making those comparisons. In particular, we show that welfare comparisons should involve comparisons of wealth. Writings on the welfare economics of NNP have mostly addressed economies pursuing optimal policies, and are thus of limited use. Our analysis generalises this substantially by studying economies whose governments are capable of engaging only in policy reforms. We show how linear indices can be used for the evaluation of policy reform even in the presence of non-convexities in the economic environment. The analysis pertinent for optimising governments are special limiting cases of the one we develop.The literature on green NNP has widely interpreted NNP as 'constant-equivalent consumption'. We show that this interpretation is wrong. It is the Hamiltonian that equals constant-equivalent utility. Since both theory and empirics imply that the Hamiltonian is a non-linear function of consumption and leisure, the Hamiltonian should not be confused with NNP.

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to develop a basic analytical framework that can be used to trace the environmental impacts of macroeconomic policies, and especially to identify where unforeseen negative environmental effects may occur and design remedial measures. The framework is based on a formal mathematical model which shows the second-best nature of macroeconomic policies in the presence of environmental externalities. The model confirms the empirically observed and intuitively appealing conclusion that it is the combination of macroeconomic policies and subsidiary imperfections (policy, market or institutional), rather than macroeconomic policies alone, that leads to environmental degradation. Several illustrative examples are presented from case studies in selected developing countries.

People in poor countries are for the most part agrarian and pastoral. In 1988 rural people accounted for about 65 per cent of the population of what the World Bank classifies as low-income countries. The proportion of the total labour force in agriculture was a bit in excess of this. The share of agriculture in gross domestic product in these countries was 30 per cent. These figures should be contrasted with those from industrial market economies, which are 6 per cent and 2 per cent for the latter two ratios, respectively.

Many of the frontiers of environmental economics research are at the interface of large-scale and long-term environmental change with national and global economic systems. This is also where some of the most of challenging environmental policy issues occur. Volume 3 of the Handbook of Environmental Economics provides a synthesis of the latest theory on economywide and international environmental issues and a critical review of models for analyzing those issues. It begins with chapters on the fundamental relationships that connect environmental resources to economic growth and long-run social welfare. The following chapters consider how environmental policy differs in a general-equiIibrium setting from a partial-equilibrium setting and in a distorted economy from a perfect economy. The volume closes with chapters on environmental issues that cross or transcend national borders, such as trade and the environment, biodiversity conservation, acid rain, ozone depletion, and global climate change. The volume provides a useful reference for not only natural resource and environmental economists but also international economists, development economists, and macroeconomists