2008 Publication of Enduring Quality Award
The selection committee for the Publication of Enduring Quality Award for this year was chaired by Jay Shogren, with help from Douglass Shaw and Cathy Kling.
After much careful deliberation, the committee selected the winning paper for 2008. The 2008 AERE Publication of Enduring Quality Award goes to:
Karl-Goran Mäler
Environmental Economics: A Theoretical Inquiry
Resources for the Future Press, 1974.
Karl-Goran was not able to be there in person to accept the award, but here is a statement from Jay Shogren about the selection.
MÄLER, K-G. 1974, ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS: A THEORETICAL INQUIRY. PUBLISHED BY THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE, BALTIMORE AND LONDON.
Rationale: K-G. Mäler’s book—Environmental Economics: A Theoretical Inquiry—helped lay the foundation for the next three decades of theoretical and applied work in environmental economics. The range of topics he covered is astonishing given the nascent stage of environmental economics. His book developed a consistent analytical framework to integrate the environment into core economic thinking: materials balance, growth theory, general equilibrium theory, national income accounting, welfare theory and valuation, game theory, and incentive design. As a former physicist, the book is unapologetically rigorous and concise, which helped the next generations of environmental economists focus on maintaining the high level of intellectual inquiry expected by the mainstream economics profession. This helped guarantee that environmental economics would be viewed as a serious field of economics. At the same time, Mäler’s book explored practical issues of implementation and evaluation of the ideas laid out in the book, e.g., bribes and charges are equivalent in theory, but differ in administration and enforcement. Environmental Economics is both a classic reference and required reading.
It should be noted that Karl-Goran also is an inaugural AERE fellow.