Hans Wiesmeth is currently the President of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Leipzig, Germany, and a professor emeritus at the Faculty of Business and Economics of Technical University of Dresden, Germany. From 2005 to 2010 he was on leave to act as Dean of HHL - Leipzig Graduate School of Management. Before joining Dresden University of Technology in 1992 he had a professorship in economics at the University of Bonn and visiting professorships in Canada. He was appointed President of DIU Dresden International University in September 2010. Hans Wiesmeth served as Vice-Rector Research at Dresden University of Technology for seven years from 1993. From 2000 through 2003 he was the Founding Director of BIOTEC, the Biotechnological Centre at Dresden University of Technology. His research interests range from general equilibrium theory to environmental economics and include areas such as allocation of global public commodities on the one hand and extended producer responsibility on the other.

• Introduction.- PART I THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT.- Differing Views on the Environment.- The International Dimension of the Environment.- PART II THEORETICAL ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS.- Basics of Environmental Economics.- Allocation Problems in a Market Economy.- The Internalization of External Effects.- Public Goods in Environmental Economics.- PART III ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY.- From Theory to Policy: Information Deficits.- Command-and-Control Policy.- The Price-Standard Approach to Environmental Policy.- International Environmental Commodities and the Principal-Agent-Approach.- Holistic Environmental Policies.- PART IV THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE GLOBALIZED WORLD.- Trade and the Environment: The Legal Context.- Overfishing.- Integration of Trade and the Environment.