Environmental and natural resource economics

Nature and environment produce goods and services to the benefit of society. Some of these goods are traded in markets (e.g. energy resources), whereas markets are missing for other goods and services of nature, even though they are highly appreciated by society (e.g. recreational services).

However, nature and environment may be impaired and degraded by human activity. For this reason the research within the field of environmental and natural resource economics to a large extent deals with the question of how the resources should be managed for the best of society.