Human well-being and the natural environment
- Oxford Oxford University Press 2007
- xxiv, 351 p.
Table of Contents Summary and Guide Introduction: Means and Ends I Valuing and Evaluating Prologue 1:The Notion of Well-Being *1:Ordering Social States 2:Why Measure Well-Being? 3:Constituents and Determinants of Well-Being II Measuring Current Well-Being Prologue 4:Theory 5:Current Quality of Life in Poor Countries III Measuring Well-Being over Time Prologue 6:Intergenerational Well-Being *6:Intergenerational Conflicts 7:Economic Institutions and the Natural Environment 8:Valuing Goods 9:Wealth and Well-Being IV Evaluating Policies in Imperfect Economies Prologue 10:Policy Reforms 11:Discounting Future Consumption: How and Why 12:Institutional Responses to Policy Change V Valuing Potential Lives Prologue 13:Some Views 14:Classical Utilitarianism and the Genesis Problem *14:Numbers and Well-Being under Classical Utilitarianism 15:Actual versus Potential Lives *15:Generation-Relative Utilitarianism Appendix
Description In Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment, Partha Dasgupta explores ways to measure the quality of life. In developing quality-of-life indices, he pays particular attention to the natural environment, illustrating how it can be incorporated, more generally, into economic reasoning in a seamless manner. Professor Dasgupta puts the theory that he develops to use in extended commentaries on the economics of population, poverty traps, global warming, structural adjustment programmes, and free trade, particularly in relation to poor countries. The result is a treatise that goes beyond quality-of-life measures and offers a comprehensive account of the newly emergent subject of ecological economics.
With the publication of this new paperback edition, Professor Dasgupta has taken the opportunity to update and revise his text in a number of ways, including developments to facilitate its current use on a number of gradate courses in environmental and resource economics. The treatment of the welfare economics of imperfect economies has been developed using new findings, and the Appendix has been expanded to include applications of the theory to a number of institutions, and to develop approximate formulae for estimating the value of environmental natural resources.
9780199267194
Natural resources--Management Sustainable development Human ecology Quality of life Environmental economics Environmental quality