Originally published in 1992 Economics for the Wilds argues that an economics that properly values the resources of the wilds offers the best long-term security for their future. Most of the world’s wilds have, in fact, always been utilized by local societies who have managed their resources sustainably, and one important guarantee for their preservation is therefore the continued participation of those communities and an adequate reward to them for their management. The book looks at the complexity and global nature of the issues, at the application of economics to the wilds and at the policies for their conservation and sustainable management which then result. It also examines specific forms of utilization of wild species and habitats, both sustainable and unsustainable, and including community-based development, tourism, the use of rainforest products, poaching and the impact of conservation on wildlife use. The book concludes that a comprehensive utilization strategy for wild resources is needed to ensure their continued existence and the continued flow of benefits from them.

A collection of interrelated essays arguing that the best way to ensure the conservation of the wilds is an economic structure that fully values their resources. The book stresses a need for a sustainable utilization strategy of wild species and habitats.

Increasingly, wildlife and wildlands are being asked to pay their way in order to continue to receive special protected status. The purpose of this book is to provide a theoretical and practical basis for understanding the value of wild resources as well as the strategies for conserving them. In addition, it is intended to help bridge the gap between development and protectionist philosophies by placing wildlife, wildlands, and their diversity in the proper economic context.

Why do conservationists need a field guide to economics on their shelves alongside the well-loved bird and plant guides? Two reasons, really. First, the economic decisions people make every day are at the core of the world's conservation issues: climate change, Amazonian deforestation, tiger poaching, vulture declines in Asia, and countless others. Second, and more importantly, an understanding of the economic forces behind these decisions can help conservationists safeguard biodiversity in a more sophisticated and effective way. The authors use simple illustrations, examples from around the world, and readable (occasionally irreverent) prose to describe the central economic principles that are relevant to conservation. They assume no previous economic training. The book should prove an excellent resource for both teachers and students in conservation and ecology classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as for working scientists and others interested in learning more about conservation and economics.

Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.

The Wild East bridges political economy and anthropology to examine a variety of il/legal economic sectors and businesses such as red sanders, coal, fire, oil, sand, air spectrum, land, water, real estate, procurement and industrial labour. The 11 case studies, based across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, explore how state regulative law is often ignored and/or selectively manipulated. The emerging collective narrative shows the workings of regulated criminal economic systems where criminal formations, politicians, police, judges and bureaucrats are deeply intertwined. By pioneering the field-study of the politicisation of economic crime, and disrupting the wider literature on South Asia’s informal economy, The Wild East aims to influence future research agendas through its case for the study of mafia-enterprises and their engagement with governance in South Asia and outside. Its empirical and theoretical contribution to debates about economic crimes in democratic regimes will be of critical value to researchers in Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Comparative Politics, Political Science and International Relations, Criminologists and Development Studies, as well as to those inside and outside academia interested in current affairs and the relationship between crime, politics and mafia enterprises.