The measurement of environmental and resource values

Freeman's The Benefits of Environmental Improvement: Theory and Practice, published by RFF in 1979, examined in a clear and objective manner the relationship between benefits and environmental decision-making and the problems involved in measuring the values of environmental changes. The years following publication of this state-of-the-art study have seen a virtual explosion of new theoretical developments and empirical applications in resource and environmental valuation.

In the manner of its distinguished predecessor this new work presents a comprehensive, rigorous treatment of benefit measurement that includes entirely reworked analyses of such topics as the contingent valuation technique, valuing improved health, property value models, and the travel cost approach.

New topics include intertemporal welfare measures, the use of discrete choice models, the valuation of risk changes, hedonic wage models, nonuse values, and measurement of the cost of environmental policies.

The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values provides an introduction to the principal methods and techniques of resource and environmental valuation to professional economists and graduate students who are not directly engaged in the field. Practitioners in the field will welcome the work as an up-to-date reference on recent developments in the theory and methods underlying the practice of resource valuation.

Readers of every kind will understand more clearly and appreciate the important role that estimates of the economic values of environmental and resource services can play in supporting resource and environmental management decisions.