2nd Edition

Natural Resource Economics The Essentials

By Tom Tietenberg, Lynne Lewis Copyright 2025
    424 Pages 37 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    424 Pages 37 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Natural Resource Economics: The Essentials offers a policy-oriented approach to the increasingly influential field of natural resource economics that is based upon a solid foundation of economic theory and empirical research. Students will not only leave the course with a firm understanding of natural resource economics, but they will also be exposed to a number of case studies showing how underlying economic principles provided the foundation for specific natural resource policies. This key text highlights what insights can be derived from the actual experience.

    Key features include:

    • Extensive coverage of the major issues, including energy, recyclable resources, water policy, land conservation and management, forests, fisheries, other ecosystems, and sustainable development
    • Introductions to the theory and method of natural resource economics, including externalities, experimental and behavioral economics, benefit-cost analysis, and methods for valuing the services provided by the environment
    • Boxed ‘Examples’ and ‘Debates’ throughout the text, which highlight global cases and major talking points.

    This second edition provides updated data, new studies, and more international examples. There is a considerable amount of new material, with a deeper focus on climate change. The text is fully supported with end-of-chapter summaries, discussion questions, and self-test exercises in the book, as well as a suite of supplementary digital resources, including multiple-choice questions, simulations, references, slides, and an instructor’s manual. It is adapted from the 12th edition of the best-selling Environmental and Natural Resource Economics textbook by the same authors.

    Preface. An Overview of the Book. Acknowledgements. PART I: INTRODUCTION TO THE FIELD OF NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS 1. Visions of the Future 2. The Economic Approach: Property Rights, Externalities, and Environmental Problems 3. Evaluating Trade-Offs: Benefit-Cost Analysis and Other Decision-Making Metrics 4. Valuing the Environment: Methods 5. Ecosystem Services: Nature’s Threatened Bounty 6. Dynamic Efficiency and Sustainable Development 7. Depletable Resource allocation Over Time: The Role of Longer Time Horizons, Substitutes and Extraction Cost 8. Common-Pool Resources: Commercially Valuable Fisheries 9. Forests: Storable, Renewable Resources 10. Land: A Locationally Fixed, Multipurpose Resource PART II: NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS AND CLIMATE CHANGE 11. Climate Change: The Role of Energy Policy 12. Climate Change: Adaptation: Floods, Wildfires, and Water Scarcity 13. Sustainable Development: Meeting the Challenge. Answers to Self-Test Exercises. Glossary. Index.

    Biography

    Tom Tietenberg is the Mitchell Family Professor of Economics, Emeritus at Colby College, Maine, USA.

    Lynne Lewis is Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Colorado State University, Colorado USA and Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics Emeritus at Bates College, Maine, USA.