The behavior of individuals currently living will generally have long-term consequences that affect the well-being of those who will come to live in the future. Intergenerational interdependencies of this nature raise difficult moral issues because only the current generation is in a position to decide on actions that will determine the nature of the world in which future generations will live. Although most are willing to attach some weight to the interests of future generations, many would argue that it is (...) not necessary to treat these interests as equivalent to those of the current generation. A common approach in this context is to use a system of discounting to evaluate future benefits and harms. This paper assesses the logic of discounting drawing on the writings of economists and philosophers. Much of the economic literature concerns the choice of an appropriate social discount rate. The social discount rate can be taken to reflect beliefs about the rights of future generations, a subject that has been extensively debated in the phioosophic literature. The writings of both economists and philosophers concerned with the weight to attach to the interests of future generations are reviewed and evaluated in this paper and the implications for environmental policy are discussed. (shrink)

There has been much discussion of changing agricultural structure in the United States. In this paper, the author reviews some of the factors contributing to structural change in the United States and describes the policies adopted by the European Community with respect to agricultural structure. The European experience with structural policies suggests that this approach is not very promising for the United States where no specific structural policies exist. The argument developed in this paper is that structural changes in agriculture (...) are simply one example of economic adjustment in a capitalist economy, that economic adjustments are generally desirable although they are not costless, and that discussions of agricultural structure should focus on methods to alleviate the costs of adjustment rather than on efforts to prevent change. (shrink)

Property rights are important institutions that influence economic performance and reflect the historical, cultural, and political realities of particular societies. Drawing on a variety of concepts from legal and economic studies, a framework for explaining the origin and evolution of property rights is developed and applied to the specific case of changing ground water rights in Nebraska. The Nebraska case is an interesting example of reliance on local control in regulating water use. Despite the importance of local initiatives in ground (...) water management, this case also illustrates the need for external support from the judicial and legislative systems. The evolution of ground water property rights in Nebraska, as in other parts of the United States, has been conditioned by historical circumstances and changing values and attitudes as well as by economic and political forces. (shrink)

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Community (EC) has been criticized for causing a misallocation of resources, inequitable income transfers, and enormous budgetary costs. The purpose of this paper is to examine the political economy of agriculture and agricultural policy in the EC. The results of the analysis indicate that conflicts between national political objectives and broader, community-wide concerns are important factors in the performance of EC agriculture. The pressures for reform of the CAP will lead to modification (...) of the system, but changes in EC agricultural policy are likely to be moderate because of the inherent inertia of the policy-making process. As a result, the agricultural system in the EC will probably continue to evolve in an atmosphere of crisis with most reforms directed at symptoms rather than fundamental problems. (shrink)