Download or read book Poverty, Institutions, and the Environmental-resource Base written by Partha Dasgupta and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1994 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper relies on empirical material drawn from anthropology, demography, economics, and the environmental sciences for identifying possible links between rural poverty, fertility behavior, and the local environmental resource base in poor countries. The authors argue that poverty and institutional failure are both moot causes of environmental degradation and that the latter may well be a cause (as well as an effect) of high fertility rates. The article provides the background to the discussion and the capital theory that is necessary for any exploration into the economics of environment and development. The authors summarize and extend the literature on optimal development, intertemporal accounting prices, and the idea of net national product in both first and second best economies.