Abstract
Economics has a lot to offer, TO YOU! There is precious knowledge on the behaviour of individuals, and how they cooperate and rival with each other in society. There are important insights into public affairs, international relations, as well as global and intergenerational issues. This is certainly impressive. However, it is also way too much to be covered in a single textbook. Consequently, textbook authors have to be selective. In the first chapter of this book, we explain the criteria according to which we have made our choice. We give an overview of what we cover in this book, and how.
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Notes
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Examples are Cohen and Howe (2010) and Ippolito (2010). These books, general or specific, use less mathematics than the ones that seem to be primarily addressed to students of economics and management. This is certainly adequate for some non economist audiences, judex non calculat (the judge doesn’t calculate), but not so for others, like students of natural and engineering sciences.
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Of course, what has been said above works both ways: economists involved in environmental studies must also understand what is going on in the other contributing disciplines. But this is a topic for the authors of textbooks like “Environmental Engineering for Economists”.
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Well, let’s be modest and put “attenuation” instead of “solution”.
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However, it is sometimes useful to choose different assumptions regarding the objective of the firm. E.g., certain firms who enjoy tax benefits because they are deemed to operate in the public interest may not be allowed to make profits at all. For these kinds of firms other objectives, like maximizing market share or maximizing the well-being of their managers, might be assumed.
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We trust in the intellectual capacity of our readership to meet this demand and we sincerely promise to be helpful!
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In the economics literature you find the first kind of models under the headline of welfare economics, the second under the headline of public choice. Below, we concentrate on the welfare economics approach. This does not imply that the authors believe that governments always strive for the common good. Instead, the idea of a welfare maximizing government is used as a norm against which the performance of real governments can be measured.
References
Asafu-Adjaye J (2005) Environmental economics for non-economists, 2nd edn. World Scientific Publishing, New Jersey
Cohen AJ, Howe I (2010) Economics for life – smart choices for all? Pearson, Boston
Fisher TCG, Prentice D, Waschik R (2010) Managerial economics – a strategic approach, 2nd edn. Routledge, London/New York
Ippolito RA (2010) Economics for lawyers. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Jaeger WK (2005) Environmental economics for tree huggers. Island Press, Washington, DC
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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Endres, A., Radke, V. (2012). Introduction. In: Economics for Environmental Studies. Springer Texts in Business and Economics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31193-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31193-2_1
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