ABSTRACT
The understanding of the interaction between economies and their environments is a basic aspect of environmental economics. Assessing the economic value of the environment is a major topic in environmental economics and it raises technical questions reflecting the nature of environmental goods. Environmental economics tries to measure the value of these aspects and give a monetary value to the environment so that the value can be taken into consideration. The main purpose of economic instruments is to create incentives in order to change behavioral patterns, but these can also be a source of financial resources that may be used for environmental protection. Environmental regulations in most countries have traditionally relied on command-and-control policies where standards or limits are set by governments and which are applied uniformly to a broad category of sources. Environmental economics is the subset of economics that is concerned with the efficient allocation of environmental resources.
