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 MIT Dictionary of Modern Economics, coauthor of
Blueprint for a Green Economy, and editor of Blueprint 2: Greening the World
Economy.