Brownfields are properties for which redevelopment is hampered by known or suspected contamination and by concerns about associated liability. Because failing to redevelop brownfields may negatively affect welfare and the environment, a number of states have created voluntary programs to reduce...

The value of mortality risk reduction is an important component of the benefits of environmental policies. In recent years, the number, scope, and quality of valuation studies have increased dramatically. Revealed preference studies of wage compensation for occupational risks, on which analysts...

With contingent valuation, both the goods being valued and the payment vehicles used to value them are mostly hypothetical. However, although numerous studies have examined the impact of experience with the good on willingness to pay, less attention has been given to experience with payment...

Researchers using stated preference (SP) techniques have increasingly come to rely on what we call “hypothetical baselines.” By this we mean that respondents are provided with a description of a current state, or baseline, but that this baseline is intentionally not the actual state of...

Concerns about nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay have led to the establishment of pollution limits—total maximum daily loads (TMDLs)—which, by 2025, are expected to reduce nitrogen loadings to the Bay by 25 percent and phosphorous loadings by 24 percent from current levels. This paper...

In the past two decades, rapid population and economic growth on the U.S.–Mexico border has spurred a dramatic increase in electricity demand. In response, American energy multinationals have built power plants just south of the border that export most of their electricity to the United...

In the past two decades, rapid population and economic growth on the U.S.–Mexico border has spurred a dramatic increase in electricity demand. In response, American energy multinationals have built power plants just south of the border that export most of their electricity to the United...

Conservation investments are increasingly evaluated on the basis of their return on investment (ROI). Conservation ROI analysis quantitatively measures the costs, benefits, and risks of investments so conservancies can rank or prioritize them. This paper surveys the existing conservation ROI and...

Modern geographic information system (GIS) tools have allowed a more careful examination of how the physical characteristics of a property’s neighborhood and surrounding land uses are capitalized into property values. The ArcGIS Viewshed tool is a case in point: it identifies the cells in an...

There has been growing interest among local governments in floodplain conservation as a flood damage reduction strategy. We evaluate one such investment—a greenway along the Meramec River in St. Louis County, Missouri. We estimate the opportunity costs of the conservation investment less the...