Green building has received increased attention over the past decade from both environmental economists and policymakers. While there is no single definition of “green buildings” or its related policy, researchers and organizations tend to emphasize resource efficiency in building and reducing the impacts of buildings on human health and the environment. Thus a growing array of building sector policies have been implemented in the United States and other countries aimed at energy efficiency and reducing environmental impacts of the structure or site. This article presents an overview of green building economics and policies through a survey of the theoretical and empirical evidence concerning green buildings. To bound our review and to reflect the importance of life cycle and nonenergy impacts of green buildings, we focus on whole-building investments. Green buildings are supported by a suite of policies, including voluntary and mandatory programs, that affects the entire life of the building, from design and construction to operation and deconstruction. Thus we distinguish green building policy from component-level policies to promote energy efficiency, including appliance standards, building codes, and other technology-specific regulations, and more general policies that affect buildings indirectly (e.g., wetlands offset policies, antisprawl policies). In the next section we provide additional background and definitions concerning green building programs and policies. This is followed by a review of market failures and other barriers that have given rise to green building, and empirical evidence on the impacts of green building policies. Then we describe green building policies in the United States and evidence concerning their effects, and we briefly review initiatives in other countries. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges for the empirical study of green buildings and identify priorities for future research and policies in this area.