Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications

Conventional economics is often criticized for failing to reflect adequately the value of clean air and water, species diversity, and social and generational equity. By excluding biophysical and social systems from their analyses, many conventional economists overlook problems of the increasing scale of human impacts and the inequitable distribution of resources. Ecological Economics is an introductory-level textbook for an emerging paradigm that addresses this flaw in much economic thought. The book defines a revolutionary "transdiscipline" that incorporates insights from the biological, physical, and social sciences, and it offers a pedagogically complete examination of this exciting new field. The book provides students with a foundation in traditional neoclassical economic thought, but places that foundation within a new interdisciplinary framework that embraces the linkages among economic growth, environmental degradation, and social inequity. Introducing the three core issues that are the focus of the new transdiscipline — scale, distribution, and efficiency — the book is guided by the fundamental question, often assumed but rarely spoken in traditional texts: What is really important to us? After explaining the key roles played by the earth's biotic and abiotic resources in sustaining life, the text is then organized around the main fields in traditional economics: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and international economics. The book also takes an additional step of considering the policy implications of this line of thinking."Ecological Economics" includes numerous features that make it accessible to a wide range of students: more than thirty text boxes that highlight issuesof special importance to students lists of key terms that help students organize the main points in each chapter concise definitions of new terms that are highlighted in the text for easy reference study questions that encourage student exploration beyond the text glossary a

This introductory textbook describes the basics of traditional neoclassical economic thought and also examines the connections between economic growth, environmental degradation, and social inequity. The volume opens with a discussion of the role of the earth's biotic and abiotic resources in sustaining life. The rest of the text is organized around the main fields in traditional economics: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and international economics.
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Conventional economics is increasingly criticized for failing to reflect the value of clean air and water, species diversity, and social and generational equity. By excluding biophysical and social reality from its analyses and equations, conventional economics seems ill-suited to address problems in a world characterized by increasing human impacts and decreasing natural resources. "Ecological Economics is an introductory-level textbook for an emerging paradigm that addresses this fundamental flaw in conventional economics. The book defines a revolutionary "transdiscipline" that incorporates insights from the biological, physical, and social sciences, and it offers a pedagogically complete examination of this exciting new field. The book provides students with a foundation in traditional neoclassical economic though, but places that foundation within a new interdisciplinary framework that embraces the linkages among economic growth, environmental degradation, and social inequity. An accompanying work-book is also available. While many books have been written on ecological economics, and several text-books describe basic concepts of the field, this is the only stand-alone textbook that offers a complete explanation of both theory and practice.

Joshua Farley is assistant professor in Community Development and Applied Economics and research assistant professor at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. He is also on the faculty of the Center for Resource Management and Environmental Studies at the University of the West Indies in Barbados.

Herman E. Daly is professor at the University of Maryland, School of Public Affairs. From 1988 to 1994 he was senior economist in the environment department of the World Bank. Prior to 1988 he was Alumni Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University, where he taught economics for twenty years. His books include Steady-State Economics(Freeman, 1977; second edition, Island Press, 1991); For the Common Good(with John Cobb, Beacon, 1989), and Beyond Growth(Beacon, 1996). In 1996, he received the Heineken Prize for Environmental Science awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the "alternative Nobel Prize."