Economic Values and the Natural World

In this book, David Pearce addresses one of the single most important issues for economists dealing with environmental problems: how to place economic value on aspects of the natural world. Pearce provides a clear account of the context of and reasons for economic valuation and surveys the economic approaches to placing monetary values on people's preferences for environmental quality. He shows how the different methods have been applied in practice - with numerous detailed case studies and analyses -and explains how the results provide an economic rationale for conserving the environment, whether it is the world's biological diversity or the global atmosphere. David W. Pearce is Professor of Economics at University College London and Director of the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment. He is editor of The M.I.T. Dictionary of Modern Economics, coauthor of Blueprint for a Green Economy, and editor of Blueprint 2: Greening the World Economy.