Environmental economics is a sub-field of economics concerned with environmental issues. It has become a widely studied subject due to growing environmental concerns in the twenty-first century. Environmental economics "undertakes theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies around the world. ... Particular issues include the costs and benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with air pollution, water quality, toxic substances, solid waste, and global warming."
Ecological economics, bioeconomics, ecolonomy, eco-economics, or ecol-econ is both a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially. By treating the economy as a subsystem of Earth's larger ecosystem, and by emphasizing the preservation of natural capital, the field of ecological economics is differentiated from environmental economics, which is the mainstream economic analysis of the environment. One survey of German economists found that ecological and environmental economics are different schools of economic thought, with ecological economists emphasizing strong sustainability and rejecting the proposition that physical (human-made) capital can substitute for natural capital.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community". The NBER is well known for providing start and end dates for recessions in the United States.
Genuine progress indicator (GPI) is a metric that has been suggested to replace, or supplement, gross domestic product (GDP). The GPI is designed to take fuller account of the well-being of a nation, only a part of which pertains to the size of the nation's economy, by incorporating environmental and social factors which are not measured by GDP. For instance, some models of GPI decrease in value when the poverty rate increases. The GPI separates the concept of societal progress from economic growth.
A green economy is an economy that aims at reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities, and that aims for sustainable development without degrading the environment. It is closely related with ecological economics, but has a more politically applied focus. The 2011 UNEP Green Economy Report argues "that to be green, an economy must not only be efficient, but also fair. Fairness implies recognizing global and country level equity dimensions, particularly in assuring a Just Transition to an economy that is low-carbon, resource efficient, and socially inclusive."
Sir Partha Sarathi Dasgupta, is an Indian-British economist who is the Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom and Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
Simon Asher Levin is an American ecologist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University. He specializes in using mathematical modeling and empirical studies in the understanding of macroscopic patterns of ecosystems and biological diversities.
Elhanan Helpman is an Israeli economist who is currently the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University. He is also a Professor Emeritus at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University. Helpman is among the thirty most cited economists in the world according to IDEAS/RePEc.
Gene Michael Grossman is the Jacob Viner Professor of International Economics at Princeton University. He received his B.A. in Economics from Yale University in 1976 and his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. He became assistant professor at Princeton University in 1980 and full professor of economics in 1988. He is well known for his research on international trade, in large part focusing on the relationship between economic growth and trade and the political economy of trade policy. He is also known for his work on the environmental Kuznets curve. He frequently collaborated with Harvard professor Elhanan Helpman, producing three books together: Innovation and Growth in the Global Economy, Special Interest Politics, and Interest Groups and Trade Policy. In 2009, Grossman received an honorary doctorate in Economics from the University of St. Gallen. Grossman received the 2015 Onassis Prize for International Trade. In 2016, Grossman received an honorary doctorate in Economics from the University of Minho. Professor Grossman currently lives with his wife and fellow lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Jean Baldwin Grossman. He has two children.
James J. Kay was an ecological scientist and policy-maker. He was a respected physicist best known for his theoretical work on complexity and thermodynamics.
Oded Galor is an Israeli-American economist who is currently Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University. He is the founder of unified growth theory. Galor has contributed to the understanding of process of development over the entire course of human history and prehistory, and the role of deep-rooted factors in the transition from stagnation to growth and in the emergence of the vast inequality across the globe. Moreover, he has pioneered the exploration of the impact of human evolution, population diversity, and inequality on the process of development over most of human existence.
Sustainability is a societal goal that broadly aims for humans to safely co-exist on Earth over a long time. Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and therefore vary in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national and individual level. Sustainability is commonly described along the lines of three dimensions : environmental, economic and social. Many publications state that the environmental dimension should be regarded as the most important one. Accordingly, in everyday usage of the term, sustainability is often focused on the environmental aspects. The most dominant environmental issues since around 2000 have been climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution. Humanity is now exceeding several "planetary boundaries".
Jeffrey Gale Williamson is the Laird Bell Professor of Economics (Emeritus), Harvard University; an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin (Madison); Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and Research Fellow for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He also served (1994–1995) as the president of the Economic History Association. His research focus is and has been on comparative economic history and the history of the international economy and development. Economist Hilary Williamson Hoynes is his daughter.
Joan Martinez Alier is a Catalan economist, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Economic History and researcher at ICTA at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
Tim Jackson is a British ecological economist and professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey. He is the director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), a multi-disciplinary, international research consortium which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. Tim Jackson is the author of Prosperity Without Growth and Material Concerns (1996). In 2016, he received the Hillary Laureate for exceptional mid-career Leadership. His most recent book Post Growth—Life After Capitalism was published in March 2021 by Polity Press.
Prof. Carl Folke, is a trans-disciplinary environmental scientist and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He is a specialist in economics, resilience, and social-ecological systems. He is Science Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Jeroen Cornelis Johannes Maria van den Bergh is an environmental economist of Dutch origin. As of January 2015 he was ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Deputy Director for Research of its Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, and professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at VU University Amsterdam.
Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak is a Bangladeshi economist and a professor of economics at Yale University. Moreover, he is a co-chair of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab's (J-PAL) Urban Services Initiative and its Environment and Energy sector, as well as the lead academic for Bangladesh at the International Growth Centre (IGC). His research interests concentrate on environmental issues in developing countries.
Clive L. Spash is an ecological economist. He currently holds the Chair of Public Policy and Governance at Vienna University of Economics and Business, appointed in 2010. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Environmental Values.
