Résumé :
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This book is intended as a response to the recent explosion of interest, both popular and scientific, in resource (especially energy) and environmental issues. Chapter 1, the introduction, explains the scope and plan in some detail. Chapter 2, concerns optimal depletion of exhaustible resources. Following the development of the basic theory, Chapter 3 extends the theory to treat revewable resources, with special attention to the problem of managing stocks for sustained yields in a common-property setting. Chapter 4 is an empirical counter part to chapters 2 and 3, a discussion of the behavior of extractive resource costs and prices, and some other indicators of scarcity. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with environmental issues. Chapter 5 makes the transition from extractive resources to in situ resources of a natural environment. Chapter 6 is a theoretical and empirical portion of the chapter we look first at the rather abstract problem of attaining efficiendy in the presence of pollution externality and then we consider the strengths and weaknesses of the various policy instruments proposed to control pollution, such as taxes, subsidies, marketable permits, and direct controls on technology or emissions. Chapter 7 is essentially a defense of the economic approach to resource and environmental issues.
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