ABSTRACT
The field of environmental economics is relatively new, dating from the 1960s, but many of the core ideas in the field are actually quite old. This chapter examines the evolution of those ideas, starting with Thomas Robert Malthus' well-known theory of population growth, which drew dire predictions from the presence of natural resource scarcity. Malthus' emphasis on the implications of resource scarcity in the face of rapidly growing populations had clearly influenced later scholarship on the issue, including Boserup's model and the Ehrlich-Simon debate. Since at least John Stuart Mill's work in the mid-19th century, economists have recognized that environmental amenities have value beyond the resources they provide for production. Common pool resources create particularly interesting problems for economists who are interested in resource sustainability. Elinor Ostrom and others working in this area have determined that users themselves are able to devise rules that help avoid the overuse of a common pool resource that is predicted in conventional theory.
