Q59 - Environmental Economics: OtherReturn

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.

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.