'How much do you want for that planet?' There are few questions of greater importance than how to value the environment. In this fascinating new intellectual history, Spencer Banzhaf charts the long-standing interest of American economists in the intangible benefits of the natural world. For better or worse, their successes and failures still reverberate in our moment of deepening crisis.' Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, The University of Chicago
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.