Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Commentary
Nature 395, 433-434 (1 October 1998) | doi:10.1038/26606
How economists see the environment
Don Fullerton1 & Robert Stavins2
- Don Fullerton is in the Department of Economics, University of Texas at Austin, Texas 78712, USA and at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
- Robert Stavins is at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA and Resources for the Future.
Abstract
Economists and ecologists misunderstand each other about the environment. Improving interdisciplinary communication should enable natural scientists to take economic analysis and prescriptions more seriously.
On a topic such as the environment, communication among those from different disciplines in the natural and social sciences is both important and difficult. Economists themselves may have contributed to some misunderstandings about how they think about the environment, perhaps through enthusiasm for market solutions, perhaps by neglecting to make explicit all the necessary qualifications, and perhaps simply by the use of jargon.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
