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Hirofuni Uzawa, one of the leading economic theorists of the past 40 years, extends economic theory to cover global warming and how to address it. He constructs a theoretical framework in which three major problems concerning global environmental issues may be effectively addressed. First, all phenomena involved with global environmental issues exhibit externalities of one kind or another. Secondly, global environmental issues involve international and intergenerational equity and justice. Thirdly, global environmental issues concern the management of common natural resources and therefore require a consensus of affected countries.
1. Global warming and carbon taxes; 2. Pareto-optimality and social optimum; 3. Global warming and tradeable emission permits; 4. Global warming - dynamic analysis; 5. Dynamic optimality and sustainability; 6. Global warming and forests - an alternative approach; 7. Global warming as a cooperative game.
Hirofumi Uzawa is Director of the Research Center of Social Common Capital at Doshisha University and Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo. He has been one of the leading economic theorists for the past four decades. In recent years, he has become well known for applied research in the areas of the economics of pollution, environmental disruption, and global warming. Professor Uzawa is the author of more than twenty books, including Preference, Production, and Capital: Selected Papers of Hirofumi Uzawa (Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Economic Analysis of Social Common Capital (Cambridge University Press, 2005). The government of Japan designated him a Person of Cultural Merit in 1983, and the Emperor of Japan conferred the Order of Culture upon him in 1997.
'The brilliant economic theorist, Hirofumi Uzawa, has shown in this book the usefulness of sophisticated economic theory in the analysis of the very important and very practical problem of global climate change. He has studied such varied concepts as the optimal levels of tradeable permits and carbon taxes for the optimization of economic activity when account is taken of the effects of climate change. He has gone further to study the dynamic paths that have to be taken to best distribute the costs and gains between the present and the future as well as across countries. Finally, he has contributed a very original analysis of the process of bargaining about climate change among different countries. The book is a remarkable combination of close understanding of the climatic problem and original development of new and appropriate economic theory.' Kenneth Arrow, Stanford University 'This is a far-reaching work on the foundations of the economics for global public goods. The clarity of exposition, the depth and breadth of reach, allied to the sheer elegance of the analysis undertaken in it by Professor Uzawa, are what we have come to expect from one of the noblest and most acute social scientists of our time.' Sir Partha Dasgupta, University of Cambridge 'This long-awaited book by one of the leading economic theorists of the last century sheds new light on one of the most significant and least tractable environmental problems of our times, climate change. Not every feature of the problem is addressed, but what is covered is vintage Uzawa. The deferential (Nash) equilibrium and the core of the cooperative game between major sources of greenhouse gases are characterized with a rigour that many will find deeply satisfying. Not for the first time, an initiative by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science's Beijer Institute has strengthened the foundations of environmental economics everywhere.' Charles Perrings, University of York 'Global climate change presents important challenges and interesting problems for economic theory and empirical policy analysis, because of climate change's massive scale, long time horizon, and fundamental uncertainty. There is no one better equipped to write a book on the relationship between economic theory and global warming than Hirofumi Uzawa, the distinguished theorist from the University of Tokyo. This book will advance discussions among economists and become a standard reference for the profession.' Robert Stavins, Harvard University
