Natural Resource Economics An Introduction Barry C Field Pdf 105
The history of the NPS is rich in possibilities for anyone interested in environmental history, natural resource conservation, federal programs for historic preservation and archeology, public attitudes toward historical memory and commemoration, debates about the uses of public land, and the nature of federal agencies and programs over the past century. From wilderness designations to the setting aside of historic sites, the NPS is shaped by and, in turn, helps to shape ideas about this country's natural and cultural heritage.
natural resource economics an introduction barry c field pdf 105
As a government agency, the NPS has reflected and participated in national discussions about the environment and its relationship to society. Parks provide specific evidence about the history of conservation and management of natural resources and about the economic, ecological, and aesthetic dimensions of the public lands. Parks illuminate changes in the very concept of nature and wilderness, the economic interests involved in the setting aside and development of public lands, and ways Americans experience nature and wilderness in shifting patterns of tourism and recreation.
Park managers bear significant responsibilities for decisions about park resources that affect how future generations will see this multifaceted natural and cultural heritage. Administrative histories inform them about the decision-making of their predecessors in the NPS, and about how NPS decisions have reflected and reflect broader social, economic, cultural, and political trends and interests.
Includes coverage of original Forest Service administration of the monument, efforts then and following its transfer to the NPS to establish a national park encompassing it, its development by the CCC, wartime and later threats to its integrity, and natural and cultural resources management issues. Appendixes for visitation, superintendents, key events, legislation. A solid contract history.
Chapters cover land acquisition, physical development of Catoctin Recreation Demonstration Area, CCC activity, Shangri-La/Camp David, Mission 66, Job Corps and YCC activity, interpretation and use, natural resource management, protection. Legislation, roster of principal staff, and illustrations are appended.
After a chapter summarizing the history of the frontier post, chapters treat the period between abandonment and national monument establishment, efforts to preserve the ruins, interpretation and visitation, natural resource management, and human threats to the park. Appendixes reproduce legislation, personnel rosters, visitation statistics. Well illustrated, indexed.
Chapters address pre-park activities, legislative history, land acquisition, planning, development, natural and cultural resource issues, and special events. Appendixes include legislation, superintendents' biographies, and cooperative agreements. A thoroughly researched, effectively organized, and well written history.
A comprehensive contract account of the park's origins and development, with chapters on Indian involvement, natural and cultural resources management, park neighbors, and threats. A bibliographic essay, a chronology, and lists of superintendents and visitation statistics are appended.
Focuses on management of natural resources by the state, the Army, and the NPS. As the author persuasively argues, science and natural resource preservation have been subordinated to public accommodation and entertainment, with NPS management generally aligned with the concessioners' interest in maximizing visitation. An outstanding, critical contribution to park history.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes what's viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements.
Robbins described the definition as not classificatory in "pick[ing] out certain kinds of behaviour" but rather analytical in "focus[ing] attention on a particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity."[34] He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on the analysis of wealth: how wealth is created (production), distributed, and consumed; and how wealth can grow.[35] But he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it (as a sought after end), generates both cost and benefits; and, resources (human life and other costs) are used to attain the goal. If the war is not winnable or if the expected costs outweigh the benefits, the deciding actors (assuming they are rational) may never go to war (a decision) but rather explore other alternatives. We cannot define economics as the science that studies wealth, war, crime, education, and any other field economic analysis can be applied to; but, as the science that studies a particular common aspect of each of those subjects (they all use scarce resources to attain a sought after end).
Some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets. From the 1960s, however, such comments abated as the economic theory of maximizing behaviour and rational-choice modelling expanded the domain of the subject to areas previously treated in other fields.[36] There are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment.[37]
Questions regarding distribution of resources are found throughout the writings of the Boeotian poet Hesiod and several economic historians have described Hesiod himself as the "first economist".[40] However, the word Oikos, the Greek word from which the word economy derives, was used for issues regarding how to manage a household (which was understood to be the landowner, his family, and his slaves[41]) rather than to refer to some normative societal system of distribution of resources, which is a much more recent phenomenon.[42][43][44] Xenophon, the author of the Oeconomicus, is credited by philologues for being the source of the word economy.[45] Other notable writers from Antiquity through to the Renaissance which wrote on include Aristotle, Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), Qin Shi Huang, Ibn Khaldun, and Thomas Aquinas. Joseph Schumpeter described 16th and 17th century scholastic writers, including Tomás de Mercado, Luis de Molina, and Juan de Lugo, as "coming nearer than any other group to being the 'founders' of scientific economics" as to monetary, interest, and value theory within a natural-law perspective.[46]
At the dawn as a social science, economics was defined and discussed at length as the study of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth by Jean-Baptiste Say in his Treatise on Political Economy or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth (1803). These three items are considered by the science only in relation to the increase or diminution of wealth, and not in reference to their processes of execution.[b] Say's definition has prevailed up to our time, saved by substituting the word "wealth" for "goods and services" meaning that wealth may include non-material objects as well. One hundred and thirty years later, Lionel Robbins noticed that this definition no longer sufficed,[c] because many economists were making theoretical and philosophical inroads in other areas of human activity. In his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, he proposed a definition of economics as a study of a particular aspect of human behaviour, the one that falls under the influence of scarcity,[d] which forces people to choose, allocate scarce resources to competing ends, and economize (seeking the greatest welfare while avoiding the wasting of scarce resources). For Robbins, the insufficiency was solved, and his definition allows us to proclaim, with an easy conscience, education economics, safety and security economics, health economics, war economics, and of course, production, distribution and consumption economics as valid subjects of the economic science." Citing Robbins: "Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses".[34] After discussing it for decades, Robbins' definition became widely accepted by mainstream economists, and it has opened way into current textbooks.[68] Although far from unanimous, most mainstream economists would accept some version of Robbins' definition, even though many have raised serious objections to the scope and method of economics, emanating from that definition.[69] Due to the lack of strong consensus, and that production, distribution and consumption of goods and services is the prime area of study of economics, the old definition still stands in many quarters.
A body of theory later termed "neoclassical economics" or "marginalism" formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term "economics" was popularized by such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall and Mary Paley Marshall as a concise synonym for "economic science" and a substitute for the earlier "political economy".[24][25] This corresponded to the influence on the subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences.[70]
Neoclassical economics studies the behaviour of individuals, households, and organizations (called economic actors, players, or agents), when they manage or use scarce resources, which have alternative uses, to achieve desired ends. Agents are assumed to act rationally, have multiple desirable ends in sight, limited resources to obtain these ends, a set of stable preferences, a definite overall guiding objective, and the capability of making a choice. There exists an economic problem, subject to study by economic science, when a decision (choice) is made by one or more resource-controlling players to attain the best possible outcome under bounded rational conditions. In other words, resource-controlling agents maximize value subject to the constraints imposed by the information the agents have, their cognitive limitations, and the finite amount of time they have to make and execute a decision. Economic science centres on the activities of the economic agents that comprise society.[75] They are the focus of economic analysis.[e]