Humans and human wellbeing depend on the natural resources provided by Planet Earth, and they depend on the solidarity between human beings. That is, on the social resources provided by society. Both types of resources are available to everyone: they are public goods. The book approaches the...

In this chapter both theory and empirics are used to show that our picture of the processes of economic development changes radically when nature is introduced as a capital asset. Particular features of institutions that fashion societies' use of the natural-resource base are identified and...

In a paper delivered at the December 1955 meeting of the Econometric Society, Paul Samuelson noted that though economists had done "work of high quality and great quantity in the field of taxation," the theory of public expenditure had been "relatively neglected" (1958, 332). Anglo-American...