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The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review
HM Treasury
Economics, like I imagine other scientific disciplines, normally moves in incremental steps, and always without a central guide. Much like practitioners of other disciplines, we economists work with models of those features of the world we want to study in detail. That involves keeping all else in the far background. Models are thus parables, some say they are caricatures, which is of course their point.
Economics is also a quantitative subject. Finance ministers need estimates of tax revenues if they are to meet intended government expenditure; environment ministers today cannot but ask how much farmers should be paid to set aside land for ‘greening’ the landscape, and whether fossil-fuel subsidies should be eliminated; health ministers look to convince cabinet colleagues that investment in health is good for economic growth; and so on. Which is why economic models are almost invariably cast in mathematical terms.
Read the full review here
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