The advantages and disadvantages of genetic modification of organisms in agriculture are reviewed. These relate to the environment, human health, socio-economic effects, population growth, and differential consequences for developed and developing countries. An overall evaluation requires that...

The Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) aims at the assessment of people's willingness to pay (WTP) for a public project. The sum of the individual WTPs is interpreted as the social benefits of the project under consideration and compared to the project costs. If the benefits exceed the costs the...

Using a dynamic model of the control of an infectious disease, we derive the conditions under which eradication will be optimal. When eradication is feasible, the optimal program requires either a low vaccination rate or eradication. A high vaccination rate is never optimal. Under special...

In this paper we develop a framework to value public investments with the purpose of increasing bicycling that explicitly accounts internal costs of bicycling, which are typically neglected in current established approaches that value bicycle spending by means of gross health benefits alone, as...

Unreliable travel times cause substantial costs to travelers. Nevertheless, they are not taken into account in many cost-benefit-analyses (CBA), or only in very rough ways. This paper aims at providing simple rules on how variability can be predicted, based on travel time data from Dutch...

Understanding the economic value of nature and the services it provides to humanity has become increasingly important. In this paper we review the progress to date on both the necessary conceptual framework and empirical valuation studies required to bolster decision support systems targeted at...

Wetlands all over the world have been lost or are threatened in spite of various international agreements and national policies. This is caused by: (1) the public nature of many wetlands products and services; (2) user externalities imposed on other stakeholders; and (3) policy intervention...