Cost-Benefit Analysis of Environmental Change

An advanced text in applied welfare economics and its application to environmental economics, providing detailed rules for the economic assessment of projects which affect the environment.

Per-Olov Johansson (Author)

9780521447928, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 August 1993

248 pages, 45 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.362 kg

This book is an advanced text in applied welfare economics and its application to environmental economics. The author goes far beyond the existing literature on the valuation of environmental benefits, deriving sets of cost-benefit rules which can be used to assess private and public sector projects which affect the environment. He explains how valuation studies can be augmented so as to yield the information necessary for decision-making, showing how externalities, taxes, unemployment, risk, irreversibilities, flow and stock pollutants, discounting, and intergenerational distribution should be treated in social cost-benefit analysis. Drawing on a number of empirical illustrations, this book will be of interest not only to those taking advanced courses in environmental economics, welfare economics, and public economics, but also as a reference for those undertaking project evaluations in government and business.

1. Introduction
2. Some basic concepts
3. Consumer surplus measures
4. Valuing public goods: practical methodologies
5. General equilibrium cost-benefit rules
6. Cost-benefit rules, national income accounts and sustainable development
7. Valuation and aggregation
8. Cost-benefit rules in a risky world
9. Valuing changes in access conditions, health risks and information
10. Empirical applications
11. Policy instruments and international environmental problems.

Subject Areas: Environmental economics [KCN]