ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS: A Critique of Benefit-Cost Analysis

For the past twenty-five years governmental decision makers have employed the economic approach of benefit-cost analysis for resource allocation decisions. “Environmental Economics” describes, in a nontechnical, readily understandable way, why the actual practice of benefit-cost analysis in environmental settings is heavily biased against the environment. The book provides environmentalists with the tools necessary to show policymakers that pursuing many policies with apparent costs greater than benefits is, in fact, welfare enhancing.

Philip E. Graves, Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1973, is a professor whose interests currently lie in environmental economics, urban/regional economics, and applied price theory. His recent research emphasizes the role of lobor supply market failures for optimal public goods provision and for the willingness-to-accept versus willingness-to-pay disparity. Similar issues of labor supply, as it varies according to whether technological progress occurs predominantly for new goods vis-á-vis existing goods, underlie Graves’s recent work in economic growth and business cycles. He continues his long-standing interest in the role of amenities in the location and relocation decisions of households and in monetary economics, while pursuing several topics in applied microeconomics.