Environmental Economics: Analysis of Externalities and the Coase Theorem

Abstract

Economic activity can be considered synonymous with appropriation and transformation that lead to a decrease in resources and a degradation of the environment. The study of the economy and the environment has contributed to the emergence of two currents: the environmental economy and the ecological economy. In the present essay, the studies of the environmental economy are analyzed as heiress of the neoclassical paradigm, where the environment is considered as the provider of natural resources and as a receiver of waste, so that the activities of an agent generate a cost that is assumed by third parties, which, in turn, are deprived of any service. In this field, the contributions of Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize in Economics and author of the essay The Problem of Social Cost (1960), work of great importance within the economic and legal field.