Q57 - Ecological Economics: Ecosystem Services; Biodiversity Conservation; Bioeconomics; Industrial EcologyReturn

The commentary defends the central idea of current institutional social research - that institutions are significant variables influencing the human action regarding the resource allocation. This idea was strongly opposed by the scientific board of the Czech economic faculty (institutionally oriented economic research was labeled as needless). The goal is to open the debate about this issue and ask the opponents to formulate concrete objections. Theoretical arguments and empirical examples are raised in favor of the institutional economics.

The article argues that many failures of economic policies, especially in the developing world, are accountable to the methodological biases of the underlying mainstream economic science. While the new institutional and development economics have substantially improved economic models, they still rely on the neoclassical assumptions of methodological individualism and utilitarism. Therefore, they cannot fully grasp the gender and cultural aspects of the societies living in developing countries, the dynamic character of their economies and their embedment in the natural, social and institutional environment. These scientific biases are analysed from the standpoint of four heterodox economic schools: those of feminist economics, evolutionary economics, ecological economics, and economic anthropology. The subsequent failure of the economic policies is documented by the cross-cutting example of the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the Bretton Woods institutions. The article concludes by emphasizing the common points of the heterodox schools and advocating for a methodological plurality in the Czech economic research and education.

Neoclassical environmental economics, ecological economics and free market approaches to environmental protection are currently three main schools of thoughts that are systematically focused on interactions between the society and the environment. They all have strong defenders as well as opponents. Although the environmental economics is still considered as mainstream, the critique from alternative approaches is increasing. The goal of the article is to briefly introduce main thoughts of all three schools and their interactions. The intensity of mutual interactions in the last decade was investigated via the analysis of articles published in high-rated journals.

The paper shows the current state of environmental concerns in economic theory. Different economic schools have incorporated the environmental analysis into their theoretical framework. They use different presumptions, focus on different environmental aspects and come to diverse conclusions and political recommendations. However, there are many unclear frontiers between one another. This paper would like to help to understand these differences. It characterises and compares the main economic schools and theories. The paper focuses on environmental economics, ecological economics, new institutional economics, free market environmentalism, coevolutionary theory in economics and bioeconomics.