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Research Trends and Opportunities

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Environmental and Resource Economics 11(3–4): 383–397, 1998.© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.383Research Trends and Opportunities inEnvironmental and Natural Resource EconomicsROBERT T. DEACON1,2, DAVID S. BROOKSHIRE3, ANTHONY C. FISHER4,ALLEN V. KNEESE2, CHARLES D. KOLSTAD1, DAVID SCROGIN3,V. KERRY SMITH5, MICHAEL WARD4and JAMES WILEN61University of California-Santa Barbara, Department of Economics, Santa Barbara, CA 93106,USA (email: [email protected]);2Resources for the Future, Inc.;3University of New Mexico;4University of California-Berkeley;5Duke University;6University of California-DavisAbstract. The research questions and topics most likely to emerge in the near term future areassessed. A common theme is that policy issues will be an important driving force, as has generallybeen true in the past. More specifically, future theoretical advances are expected to occur in thetreatment of uncertainty, the incorporation of stock service flows into natural resource analysis, andthe incorporation of institutional considerations into models of resource exploitation. Research onvaluation is expected to remain vigorous, primarily in the testing of basic assumptions and recon-ciliation of existing inconsistencies. Opportunities in renewable resource economics center on theincorporation of richer behavioral and technological detail in the general frameworks that alreadyexist. A better understanding of what drives technology, and how environmental agreements can benegotiated and enforced among sovereign nations, are two topics likely to shape future research onglobal externalities. Finally, questions related to spatial aspects of natural resource use, and mattersof land use more generally, seem likely to emerge as important topics on the profession’s futureresearch agenda.Key words: economics, environment, natural resources, researchJEL classification:Q2,Q3,Q41. IntroductionAssessing where the most promising opportunities are to be found in any field ofresearch is an obviously speculative venture, though one that younger membersof the profession might arguably find useful. The co-authors of the present paper,all U.S. environmental and resource economists, contributed topics independently.These topics naturally reflect the individual interests and specialties of the contribu-tors as well as our particular institutional and economic circumstances. Some topicsthat lie in research specialties we do not cover, or that arise in different settings,may well have been overlooked.A common theme is that research on natural resource and environmentaleconomics will be driven by policy questions. This is not surprising, given the384 ROBERT T. DEACON ET AL.growing importance of environmental and natural resource issues in governmentpolicy agendas, and the fact that economists often consider their role as advocatesfor efficiency in any setting. Evidence on past research trends, reported shortly,seems to show a correlation with policy questions, but this has not been examinedrigorously. An emphasis on policy questions might seem to imply a bias towardempirical research and away from theoretical work, but this is not necessarily thecase. The topics that follow include numerous examples of each genre.We set the stage by examining how the research agenda of environmental andnatural resource economics has evolved over the last 25 years, as indicated bytopics published in one journal. Discussions of research opportunities in broadareas then follow.2. The Past as Prologue: Research Trends Since the Early 1970sEnvironmental and natural resource economics has emerged as a mature field ofresearch over the last three decades. Examining its brief history to date can providea context for the explorations of future research opportunities that follow. Theproceeding discussion examines the research topics from one academic forum, theJournal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM).Between its inauguration in 1974 and the end of 1996 JEEM published over850 articles. Each paper in this collection was categorized according to researcharea and Table 1 reports the overall topic breakdown for three sub-periods.1Thefirst line shows that the annual page count nearly doubled between the first andthird periods. Considering also that the number of environmental and resourceeconomics journals increased over the period, research in this field clearly hasgrown rapidly. Lines 2–7 show the percent of published pages by major category.When interpreting these data it is important to realize that a single article mayaddress several topics. The environmental management category has consistentlyaveraged more than 40% of total pages. The institutional/policy issues, renew-able resources, and nonrenewable resources categories combined represented about50%, with international/global and agricultural issues comprising the remainder.Overall, the page distribution across these categories was relatively constant.The article count also reveals some interesting trends within the broad environ-mental management category. Lines 8–10 report page shares for three of themost important sub-categories: ‘pollution/waste control’, ‘valuation methods’, and‘damages/benefits’. Forty percent of the 265 articles on pollution/waste control,which includes the economics of abatement and cleanup of air and water pollutionand residual materials, had a policy instruments focus. Although this sub-categorydominated the environmental management total, as time progressed this areadiminished, and the ‘valuation methods’ and ‘damages/benefits’ sub-categoriesgrew significantly. Together, the latter two account for ‘valuation’ research ingeneral. Growth in the ‘damages/benefits’ share, from 18.6% in the early period to26.2% in the final period, largely resulted from research on ‘recreation’. ResearchENVIRONMENTAL AND NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS 385Table I. Trends in environmental/natural resource topics published in JEEM.Time period: 74–80 81–88 89–96Total pages published per year 363 404 6811. % Environmental management 46.6 42.0 43.52. % Institutional/policy issues 21.6 19.8 20.03. % Renewable resources 13.1 17.8 17.84. % Nonrenewable resources 14.6 13.5 11.55. % International/global issues 2.8 2.1 4.56. % Agricultural issues 1.4 4.8 2.8Environmental management category7. % Pollution/waste control 59.5 39.9 27.78. % Valuation methods 10.8 21.4 27.59. % Damages/benefits 18.7 19.7


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