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Environmental and Resource Economics 29: 253256, 2004. 253
Bengt Kristrm, Partha Dasgupta and Karl-Gustaf Lfgren (eds.) 2002. Economic
Theory for the Environment: Essays in Honour of Karl-Gran Mler. Edward
Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, Massachusetts. xvi + 344
pp. UK70. ISBN 1 84064 887 2.This book is an excellent festschrift in honour of Karl-Gran Mler and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It is a part of the series titled New Horizons in
Environmental Economics, edited by Wallace E. Oates and Henk Folmer. Almost
all the books in this series represent significant contributions to the field of
environmental economics. This book is no exception.The books contents are diverse. The material can be mathematically esoteric
while discussing issues such as control theory for non-convex economic problems, or might be less mathematical, but still as intellectually challenging while
discussing the valuation of ecosystem services. However, despite its sometimes
technically rich contents most articles are easy to comprehend. Natural resource
economics and environmental economics find roughly equal representation in the
book and most issues discussed are currently debated both in the public domain
and in economics journals. The contributors are all well respected and established
economists. They are not just from the field of environmental, and natural resource
economics, but represent some of the best minds in mainstream economics. The list
of contributors includes Nobel laureates Kenneth J. Arrow and Robert M. Solow.This book is useful for most graduate departments that focus on environmental
and natural resource economics. I personally intend to draw from several of its
chapters for my graduate course on Advanced Economics of Natural Resources.
I expect some other instructors to do the same. I also expect researchers to find
this book a good guidebook for future research. There are several issues discussed
in this book that can be considered in a stage of intellectual infancy. Such topics
often provide fruitful avenues for further study. What I like most about the book is
that even though it deals with new and intellectually challenging issues in environmental economics, these are presented in a fairly simple and intuitive manner. Due
to this quality, the book seems to whet ones appetite for future research.K. Arrow (in the first chapter) presents a model of dynamic control under
non-convexities. I...