Essay1968
The Tragedy of the Commons
Garrett Hardin
Individually rational use of a shared resource destroys it — an argument later substantially qualified by Ostrom's fieldwork.
6 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Environmental & Resource Economics
Pricing what markets ignore — carbon, ecosystem services, common pool resources, and the discount rate that decides the future.
9 topics · 9 curated works
Topics
- 01Foundations & Overviews
- 02Carbon Pricing1
- 03Cap and Trade1
- 04Valuing Ecosystem Services1
- 05Discounting the Future1
- 06Common Pool Resources2
- 07Energy Economics1
- 08Climate Economics1
- 09Green Growth Debates1
Reading in Environmental & Resource Economics
9A way in
Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Garrett Hardin · 1968
Individually rational use of a shared resource destroys it — an argument later substantially qualified by Ostrom's fieldwork.
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
What Can We Learn from the Grand Policy Experiment? Lessons from SO2 Allowance Trading
Robert N. Stavins · 1998
Reviews the US acid rain cap-and-trade programme and finds it cut compliance costs far below the command-and-control alternative, while cautioning…
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Primary sources and full treatments.
The Economics of Exhaustible Resources
Harold Hotelling · 1931
Shows that the price of a non-renewable resource under efficient extraction must rise at the rate of interest, so an owner is indifferent between…
+3 more at this level
9 works
Paper1998
What Can We Learn from the Grand Policy Experiment? Lessons from SO2 Allowance Trading
Robert N. Stavins
Reviews the US acid rain cap-and-trade programme and finds it cut compliance costs far below the command-and-control alternative, while cautioning that its early allowance allocation still mattered for who paid.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Report2012
Inclusive Green Growth: The Pathway to Sustainable Development
World Bank
Argues green growth is not a luxury developing countries can defer, because the costs of dirty growth — depleted resources, damaged health, path-dependent infrastructure — are borne earliest by the poor.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Lecture2018
Nobel Lecture: Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics
William D. Nordhaus
Sets out the integrated assessment framework for pricing carbon, arguing a global carbon tax rising over time is the least-cost way to hold warming to a chosen target.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Report2023
Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Concludes that human activity has unequivocally warmed the planet and that the remaining carbon budget for holding warming to 1.5°C will be exhausted within years at current emission rates, making the economics of mitigation a question of speed rather than direction.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeIntermediate
Paper1931
The Economics of Exhaustible Resources
Harold Hotelling
Shows that the price of a non-renewable resource under efficient extraction must rise at the rate of interest, so an owner is indifferent between pumping now and leaving it in the ground.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Paper1997
The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital
Robert Costanza et al.
Puts a dollar figure — roughly 33 trillion a year — on services ecosystems provide for free, arguing that treating them as worthless in economic accounting is what lets them be destroyed cheaply.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Lecture2009
Nobel Lecture: Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems
Elinor Ostrom
Argues from decades of fieldwork that communities routinely manage shared resources sustainably through their own rules, without either privatisation or state control, overturning the assumption that only those two options work.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
Paper2009
On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change
Martin L. Weitzman
Argues standard cost-benefit climate models understate the case for action because the probability distribution of catastrophic outcomes has fat tails that a low discount rate alone cannot capture.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeAdvanced
In order written
1931 – 2023- 1931The Economics of Exhaustible ResourcesHarold Hotelling
- 1968The Tragedy of the CommonsGarrett Hardin
- 1997The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural CapitalRobert Costanza et al.
- 2009On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate ChangeMartin L. Weitzman
- 2018Nobel Lecture: Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for EconomicsWilliam D. Nordhaus
- 2023Climate Change 2023: Synthesis ReportIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Also covered elsewhere
This subject genuinely sits in more than one domain. These fields approach the same ground with different methods.