An analysis of the treatment of environmental issues in the Austrian school tradition
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30800/mises.2021.v9.1417Keywords:
environmental problems, subjectivism, neoclassical environmental economics, ecological economics.Abstract
This paper investigates the history of the Austrian school's approach to environmental problems, from the beginning of this tradition (1871) to the present time (2021). In this research, it is observed that, after many years of only superficial considerations on the subject, the article “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution”, published by Murray Rothbard, in 1982, marked the beginning of the definition of a distinctly Austrian paradigm, that is, based on the subjectivist ontology, for environmental problems, which was followed by other authors, especially by Roy Cordato and Graham Dawson. Further on, however, this paper identifies the problems that persist for the coherent formulation of this approach as a counterpoint to neoclassical environmental economics and the limitations that its microanalytical nature imposes on the formulation of a counterpoint to ecological economics.
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