The RFF Reader in Environmental and Resource Policy

by Wallace E. Oates (Editor)

Many articles in the Reader were originally published in RFF's quarterly magazine, Resources. Wally Oates has supplemented that with material drawn from other RFF works, including issue briefs and special reports. The readings provide concise, insightful background and perspectives on a broad range of environmental issues including benefit-cost analysis, environmental regulation, hazardous and toxic waste, environmental equity, and the environmental challenges in developing nations and transitional economies. Natural-resource topics include resource management, biodiversity, and sustainable agriculture. The articles address many of today's most difficult public policy questions, such as environmental policy and economic growth, and 'When is a Life Too Costly to Save?' New to the second edition is an expanded set of readings on global climate change and sustainability, plus cutting-edge policy applications on topics like the environment and public health and the growing problem of antibiotic and pesticide resistance. For general readers, the RFF Reader has been an accessible, nontechnical, authoritative introduction to key issues in environmental and natural resources policy. It has been especially effective in demonstrating the contribution that economics and other social science research can make toward improving public debate and decisionmaking. Organized to follow the contents of popular textbooks in environmental economics and politics, it has also found wide use in beginning environmental policy courses.

Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

Wallace Oates was a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland and a University Fellow at Resources for the Future. He received his PhD in economics at Stanford in 1965 and joined the faculty at Princeton University. He moved to the University of Maryland in 1979. He specialized in the areas of public economics and environmental economics.

His primary research interests were public finance and environmental economics. Since his first book, Fiscal Federalism (1972), he explored the assignment of functions to different levels of government in a federal system, the provision of local public goods, the design of intergovernmental grants, and the structure of local revenue systems. He worked on these matters with urban groups, the European Union, the OECD, and various federal and state agencies in the United States.

His central environmental economics interest was in the use of economic incentives for environmental management. In numerous writings including The Theory of Environmental Policy (1975, revised edition 1988), with William Baumol, he studied the design and implementation of taxes on polluting activities and systems of tradable emissions allowances. He worked on the design of regulatory programs for pollution control with the U.S. EPA, the OECD, and other federal and state agencies. He served on the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee for the EPA.