Environmental economics is essentially a branch of economics that studies externalities. In the research in this field, theoretical research mainly discusses how to design the best policy to solve the externality problem when there are various frictions such as distorted taxation, monopoly power, uncertainty, and information asymmetry in the market, including market-oriented policy and nonmarket administrative control policy based on environmental tax and pollution right transaction. Empirical studies mainly focus on the impact of environmental pollution on the economy and society, and measure and price these external costs, and also pay attention to the impact of environmental policies on pollution and economic activities. Because of the nature of the environment as a luxury good, people will have demand for good environmental quality only when the economy develops to a certain extent. Therefore, most countries have experienced the process of “pollution before treatment” in the process of economic development. A large number of environmental economics studies occur at the turning point when people realize the seriousness of environmental pollution and take active actions to effectively control it. In the United States, such a turning point occurred in 1960s. At that time, the United States faced the same severe environmental pollution problem as China today, but the introduction of the Clean Air Act (1963) at the federal level and the subsequent US Environmental Protection Agency (1970) has produced a great demand for the research of environmental and economic policies, which has prompted the international economic circles led by the United States to conduct a large number of studies on the abovementioned general theoretical and empirical problems of environmental economics (Cropper and Oates 1992). In China, a similar turning point occurred at the beginning of the twenty-first century, especially in 2006. Before that, environmental issues have not become the topic of policy and public concern in China, and the research on environmental issues in China in major Chinese economic journals is also very rare. Generally speaking, the research on environmental economics in China started late and mainly focused on empirical research. With the change of environmental situation, the research theme has also experienced changes in different stages.