Australasian Environmental Economics: Contributions, Conflicts and Cop-Outs

Australian and New Zealand environmental economists have played a significant role in the development of concepts and their application across three fields within their sub-discipline: non-market valuation, institutional economics and bioeconomic modelling. These contributions have been spurred on by debates within and outside the discipline. Much of the controversy has centred on the validity of valuations generated through the application of stated preference methods such as contingent valuation. Suggestions to overcome some shortcomings in the work of environmental economists include the commissioning of a sequence of non-market valuation studies to fill existing gaps to improve the potential for benefit transfer.