Integrated Assessment and Management of Public Resources

New Horizons in Environmental Economics series

Edited by Joseph Cooper, Senior Economist, Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, US. He served during 2005 to 2006 as a senior economist in charge of agriculture and natural resources at the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, Federico Perali, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Verona, Italy and Marcella Veronesi, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, US

This multidisciplinary work explores ways of making environmental policy decisions in managing public goods and natural parks with the goal of maximizing economic benefits to society. The contributors to the volume seek the best strategies for improving the environmental sustainability and quality of a public resource by showing how to develop quantitative information about the natural area and how it interacts with the economy. Such an analysis can be used to define policies that encourage interactions among institutions, local economic agents and park users. At the same time, it provides a measure to account for the implications of those policies on the local economy.