Pricing the Priceless

H. Spencer Banzhaf is a Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University and the director of the Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy. In addition to his role at NCSU, he is a fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and the Property and Environment Research Center. He also serves as editor of the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy and on the advisory board of the Environmental Defense Fund. He is the author of over 70 books and articles.

• Prologue; 1. Introduction: Environmental Economics in Context; 2. Conservation and Preservation; 3. Do Economists Know About Lupines? Economics vs the Environment; 4. Consumer Surplus with Apology; 5. John Krutilla and the Environmental Turn in Natural Resource Economics; 6. Pricing Pollution; 7. Lives, Damned Lives, and Statistics; 8. Benefit-Cost Analysis: Objective or Multi-objective? Non-Market Valuation and Incommensurability; 9. Constructing Markets: The Contingent Valuation Controversy; Epilogue: The Future History of Pricing the Environment; References; Index.

'Over the past 50 years, environmental economics has evolved from a small fringe of economics to a full-fledged sub-discipline, with many hundreds of practitioners populating academic institutions, multilateral organizations, national and sub-national governments, private firms, and non-governmental organizations. This unique book by Spencer Banzhaf portrays the nature, scope, and methods of economic analysis of environmental and natural resource issues through a decidedly historical lens, and thereby examines five decades of intellectual growth. Whether you are an economist, a student of environmental economics, or a skeptic of the ability of economics to provide insights about these issues, you will benefit from reading this book.' Robert Stavins, Harvard University