Estimating the economic benefits of reduced health damages due to improvements in environmental quality continues to challenge economists. We review welfare measures associated with reduced wildfire smoke exposure, and a unique dataset from California’s Station Fire of 2009 allows for a...

By using data on self-rated life satisfaction as an empirical indicator of well-being, this paper estimates the valuation of two major air pollutants differentiated by people’s age category (stage in the life cycle) and birth cohort. Life satisfaction regressions involving about 59,000...

Water quality regulation continues to be controversial, as demonstrated by recent litigation between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Florida over nutrient standards. While the costs of standards are usually known, benefits may be diverse and difficult to identify. This...

The siting of wind facilities is extremely controversial. This paper uses data on 11,331 property transactions over nine years in northern New York State to explore the effects of new wind facilities on property values. We use a fixed-effects framework to control for omitted variables and...

We show how stated preference information obtained from a choice experiment, and revealed preference information based on housing market transactions, can be combined via generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation. Specifically, we use a moment condition matching the predicted marginal...

Hedonic property value models are widely used but are susceptible to potentially invalid conjectures based on the assumed measure of environmental quality. This paper focuses on an application where this is of particular concern: leaking underground storage tanks. I estimate a hedonic model...

This article investigates the value of reducing non-point-source pollution in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Using stated preference methods, we find the lower bound on the benefits of reducing runoff enough to universally increase water clarity by 4 ft is greater than $10 million annually. Using a...

This paper investigates the idea that people are unsure about the value they place on prospective changes in environmental goods. In particular, we focus on a parametric explanation of the determinants of a "value gap," the difference between the most someone is sure they would pay for an...

Alternative funding approaches affect stated preferences. An individual’s willingness to reallocate existing tax dollars exceeds willingness to pay new taxes to conserve land. However, stated preferences also imply a non-zero opportunity cost to existing tax dollars; different income groups...

This study investigates whether public and expert preferences diverge in a valuation of two marine reserves in Western Australia. Identical choice experiments are applied to a sample of marine scientists and the Western Australian community. Evidence of both divergence and convergence between...