Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Conflicts and Choices in Biodiversity Preservation

1998; American Economic Association; Volume: 12; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1257/jep.12.3.21

1944-7965

Andrew Metrick, Martin L. Weitzman,

Environmental Conservation and Management

The purpose of this article is to examine the preservation of biodiversity as an economic problem. Using a very simple prototype model, the authors discuss how to include diversity in the objective function and how to develop a simple cost-benefit ranking criterion for ordering priorities. Then they analyze data on endangered species preservation decisions in the United States to shed light on the conformity of theory with practice. A basic theme is that the core issue in biodiversity preservation today is the fuzziness of the objective function.