Ecological Economics ─ Principles and Applications

Where environmental economics is merely a subset of neoclassical economics that seeks to assign market value to ecosystem services, ecological economics as it is presented here insists on seeing the market system as merely a part of the wider ecological system, a view that leads to the rejection of the neoclassical emphasis on efficiency in the service of never-ending growth, which is defined here as the increase in the (necessarily limited) throughput or flow of natural resources from the environment, through the economy, and then back to the environment as waste. As ecological economics builds upon neoclassical economics, however, this single volume treatment of the relatively new field by Daley (emeritus, U. of Maryland) and Farley (U. of Vermont) goes beyond merely critiquing neoclassical models and instead incorporates them into the main body of the text, thus providing an introduction to many of the main concepts and issues found in standard texts on macroeconomics and microeconomics while also addressing the disciplinary and policy implications of the natural limits to growth. They also critique unjust distribution and other economic problems, although they seem to suggest that these issues can be addressed through policy and institutional reforms, and not necessarily wholesale disciplinary upheaval. While the text is self-contained, a supplementary workbook is also available. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)