"This book will certainly be a valuable scholarly and policy contribution. It should attract a wide readership, and would be well suited for university classroom use. Its most notable accomplishment is its ambitious coverage of the many contexts in which water investments and policies need to be evaluated."
-- Bonnie G. Colby, University of Arizona

"Every economist working in water resources would want a copy of this book as a reference. Young has done the best job I have ever seen of outlining the particular conceptual problems of valuing water resources. He makes it clear that water is both undervalued and overvalued in different uses and that, as a consequence, the resource is misallocated."
--Mark Smith, Colorado College

"The history of evaluation techniques, the critical review of a vast literature, and the author's recommendations for valuing water in various uses and situations are significant contributions."
--Ken Frederick, former senior fellow, Resources for the Future

Table of Contents,
Preface, and Index

Water provides benefits as a commodity for agriculture, industry, and households--and as a public good for scenic values, waste assimilation, wildlife habitats, and recreational use. However, even as the nature and needs of economies change, water continues to be allocated to other than high priority uses, water quality continues to decline, environmental uses get inadequate attention, and floods and droughts take an unnecessarily severe toll. One reason for this is that price signals that reflect scarcities of goods and thereby guide investments and resource allocation in the private sector are usually distorted or absent in decision-making relating to water. To aid in cost-benefit analysis under conditions where appropriate price incentives are absent, economists have developed a range of alternative or “non-market” methods for measuring economic benefits.

Robert Young aims to provide the most comprehensive exposition to-date of the application of nonmarket economic valuation methods to proposed water resources investments and policies. He provides a conceptual framework for valuation of both commodity and public good uses of water, addressing valuation techniques appropriate to measuring public benefits--including water quality improvement, recreation and wildlife habitat enhancement, and flood risk reduction. However, in contrast to the existing environmental valuation literature, the emphasis here is on the commodity uses of water by agriculture, industries, and households. The book describes the various measurement methods, illustrates how they are applied in practice, and discusses their strengths, limitations, and appropriate roles.

Author Bio

Robert A. Young is emeritus professor in agricultural and resource economics at Colorado State University.

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