Economic Theory for Environmentalists is a much-needed and heralded new book that examines the implications of neoclassical economic theory and how it relates to the environment and environmental activity. It addresses the ongoing conflict between market forces and environmental integrity and explains how neoclassical economic theory views the relationship between economic activity and the natural world. Each chapter outlines the concepts of economic theory and the relevance of its environ...

Microeconomic Theory Old and New: A Student's Guide has two main goals. The first is to give advanced undergraduate and graduate students an understanding of the core model of economics: Walrasian general equilibrium theory. The text presents in detail the three building blocks of Walrasian theory—establishing Pareto efficiency in a barter economy, establishing the efficiency of competitive markets, and accounting for market failure. Each is discussed verbally, graphically, and us...

Ultrasocial argues that rather than environmental destruction and extreme inequality being due to human nature, they are the result of the adoption of agriculture by our ancestors. Human economy has become an ultrasocial superorganism (similar to an ant or termite colony), with the requirements of superorganism taking precedence over the individuals within it. Human society is now an autonomous, highly integrated network of technologies, institutions, and belief systems dedicated to the ex...

For roughly 99% of their existence on earth, Homo sapiens lived in small bands of semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, finding everything they needed to survive and thrive in the biological richness that surrounded them. Most if not all of the problems that threaten our own technologically advanced society -- from depletion of natural capital to the ever-present possibility of global annihilation -- would be inconceivable to these traditional, immediate-return societies. In fact, hunter...

Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.’s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments’ progress has been lackluster. That’s not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down. Action—on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises—is being driven by local, people’s, women’s, and grassroots movements around th...

A new baby is on the way and this little girl, who was used to being the only child with all the attention, worries what will happen to life as she knows it. While her parents seem glad, she feels kind of sad and says to herself, “What will this do to me and our family of just us three?”At first, when her brother Cameron is born, she doesn’t want him to stay and keeps asking when he will go away. She wasn’t ready to share her toys or her parents. Over time, she realizes that having ...

S.J. thinks he’s very lucky when he finds a toy dump truck in a sandbox. The next day, he finds a boat at the pool! In both cases, other children want what he has, but S.J. won’t let them play with his newfound toys. He wants them all to himself.Then, one day at the beach, S.J. tries to build a sandcastle without any luck. When other kids come by to help, S.J. learns a very important lesson. Sharing is better than playing alone. By sharing, he makes brand new friends and has tons of...

Principles of Economics is a university-level textbook in economics that offers a clear and concise exploration of the most important economic concepts.This book is unapologetically Austrian in its approach. It tackles major economic concepts and topics independently, but in a logical sequence aimed at delivering the reader an understanding of economics at an individual and societal level, and the widespread implications of economics as a topic. The first part of the book introduce...

Economists have a bad reputation. Not only do they assume that everyone is self-interested and amoral, they are almost always cheerleaders for the free market. As a result, most people who do not already share their beliefs ignore everything that economists have to say. This is a problem. Even among the highly educated, economics is a minefield of fallacies and errors. Among those who know little about the subject—a group that includes the average taxpayer and consumer, as well as most jou...

If environmental protection is costly, how much should we spend on pollution control? Is it worth reducing pollution to zero, or should we accept some level of pollution because of the economic benefits associated with it? How can we assess the benefits that people get from a less-polluted atmosphere? In broad terms, environmental economics looks at how economic activity and policy affect the environment in which we live. Some production generates pollution, such as power station emissions...

It has long been recognized that an improved standard of living results from advances in technology, not from the accumulation of capital. It has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less-developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact, the pace at which developing countries grow is largely a function of the pace at which they close that gap.Thus, to understand how countries grow and develop, it is essential to know...

From the inability of wealth to make us happier, to our catastrophic blindness to the credit crunch, "Economyths" reveals ten ways in which economics has failed us all. Forecasters predicted a prosperous year in 2008 for financial markets - in one influential survey the average prediction was for an eleven per cent gain. But by the end of the year, the Standard and Poor's 500 index - a key economic barometer - was down 38 per cent, and major economies were plunging into recession. Even the...