Forward to the 3rd Edition of Hackett Textbook, by Dr. Michal Moore:
In the policy arena that concerns every nation, from undeveloped to advanced, there is a growing awareness that the problems we face are more complex, more obdurate and intractable than in the past. There is growing recognition that we need to develop the skills and analytic tools that cross disciplines, that allow informed and effective decision-making. The discipline of Economics relies on price theory to create proxies for value, a system with imperfect translation for policy-makers, not to mention the general public. In the broader arena of environmental issues, it is apparent there are economic implications of social actions, but the policy options often remain obscured.
The answer is to develop new tools, new techniques and a new cadre of students who will evolve to handle problems with a broader and more effective sense of time and value.
Professor Hackett has opened that toolbox, and shown us how to use it. This textbook offers the philosophy, history, rationale and techniques that bring important concepts from the discipline of economics to bear on some of the most intransigent issues of our time.
I have used an earlier version of this textbook for pure economics courses as well as those which originate in a department more closely aligned with government policy or resource management. This textbook is supple enough to span that range, and to offer something else so rare in classes and textbooks today - clarity and vision that makes students want to read on to find out what happens in the end.
The chapters are arranged with the clear objective of drawing the students through a review of the building blocks in traditional microtheory, and using these blocks to see resources in the context of growing societies. Professor Hackett uses a wealth of market based examples to show the problems that arise when externalities are not properly accounted, when appropriate discounting to the future is applied. He shows us how options can be evaluated in the public policy process and suggests analytic systems that show promise in future exercises.
The reader can have confidence that a wide range of reference materials are close at hand, with wide ranging classic and contemporary papers cited and used to underpin the essence of each chapter. This book is an important link between theoretic and practical application of course, but it frankly extends it's reach far beyond this concept. In the end, facts and conclusions are not dynamic, and probably do not lend themselves to clear, thoughtful and interesting analysis. Only the analyst can do that, and this book is about how those analysts will think when they leave our classroom.
At the university we are training the very people we will depend on for clear thoughtful policies, regulations and analysis in the future. All of us in the profession of economics, whether theoreticians or practitioners, owe them the most comprehensive set of skills we can develop.
This text is a cornerstone in the movement to cross boundaries that have developed as disciplines like engineering, economics and planning were maturing. Economics and especially resource economics may be likened to a system where facts and data can be endlessly reorganized into information that is dynamic and effective at describing problems, and pointing to solutions that observe realistic rates of discount. This book weaves the elements of microtheory and policy making together in such a way that the reader will emerge with a greater understanding of the issues, as well as a new and more comprehensive way of observing, and thinking.
Michal C. Moore, PhD cantab
Senior Fellow
The Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy
2005