legitimizing farmers new knowledge learning and practices through communicative action application of an agro environmental policy this article examines the role of communication in the process that guides economic actors to integrate the moral obligations implied by adopting sustainability principles in their action choices and to reexamine their practices we analyze two approaches to implementing agro environmental measures that encourage farmers to preserve water resources verbal interactions between farmers and agricultural advisors who are part of these policy programs are analyzed drawing on jurgen habermas s theory of communicative action the discourse analysis used here shows that communicative action encouraged participants to reexamine the validity of the technical experiential and normative knowledge that legitimized their reasons for acting this study brings to light the fact that in the context of a business primarily oriented towards making a profit committing to sustainable development does not only operate in technical terms such a commitment also requires collective validation of the effectiveness of alternative farming practices

ecosystem services from eye opening metaphor to complexity blinder abstract what started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution the metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead indeed combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project by project without major institutional change the simplicity of the stock flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament the ecosystem services approach can be a part of a larger solution but its dominance in our characterization of our situation and the solution is blinding us to the ecological economic and political complexities of the challenges we actually face

integrating methods for ecosystem service assessment and valuation mixed methods or mixed messages a mixed method approach was used to assess and value the ecosystem services derived from the dogger bank an extensive shallow sandbank in the southern north sea three parallel studies were undertaken that 1 identified and quantified where possible how indicators for ecosystem service provision may change according to two future scenarios 2 assessed members of the public s willingness to pay for improvements to a small number of ecosystem services as a consequence of a hypothetical management plan and 3 facilitated a process of deliberation that allowed members of the public to explore the uses of the dogger bank and the conflicts and dilemmas involved in its management each of these studies was designed to answer different and specific research questions and therefore contributes different insights about the ecosystem services delivered by the dogger bank this paper explores what can be gained by bringing these findings together post hoc and the extent to which the different methods are complementary findings suggest that mixed method research brings more understanding than can be gained from the individual approaches alone nevertheless the choice of methods used and how these methods are implemented strongly affects the results obtained

applied fairness theory comment william baumol 1982 presented a provocative and potentially valuable piece of analysis on fairness but his contribution suffers from the flaw of defining terms in a manner similar to but with important differences from their common definitions as a result of this terminological problem it would be possible for a real world outcome to be fair or even superfair according to baumol s criteria but to be unfair according to the commonly accepted meaning of the word conversely what would commonly be accepted as fair in the real world might not be fair according to baumol s criteria my objection here is largely with baumol s terminology but its significance extends well beyond terminology because it affects the way economists think about equity issues ranging from the particular case of fairness theory to welfare economics in general the remarks that follow fall into two categories first i argue that it is unfair in the traditional meaning of the word for baumol to redefine the meaning of fair second i argue that fair outcomes can only be judged within the context of the institutional setting that produces the outcomes as a result any analysis like baumol s which examines only the outcome of a process without examining the process itself can never determine whether an outcome is fair

deliberative monetary valuation in search of a democratic and value plural approach to environmental policy the use of deliberative methods to assess environmental values in monetary terms has been motivated by the potential for small group discussion to help with preference formation and the inclusion of non economic values in this review two broad approaches are identified preference economisation and preference moralisation the former is analytical concentrates upon issues of poor respondent cognition and produces a narrow conception of value linked to utilitarianism the latter emphasises political legitimacy appeals to community values and tends to privilege arguments made in the public interest both approaches are shown to embrace forms of value convergence which undermine the prospects for value pluralism as a result exclusion and predefinition of values dominates current practice in order to maintain democratic credentials the importance attributed to monetary value needs to be left as an open question to be addressed as part of a process determining an agreement to pay to this end we identify a discourse based approach as a third way consistent with the democratic and value plural potential of deliberative monetary valuation

complementarity of socio economic and emergy evaluation of agricultural production systems the case of slovenian dairy sector agriculture is a complex system in which the economic principles of production are directly intertwined with its biological and ecological characteristics the paper investigates synergetic potentials of multiple criteria and multiple perspective evaluation of agricultural activity through a study of the dairy sector in slovenia socio economic and emergy evaluation was performed on nine farm types formulated to represent the diversity of the country s dairy sector the results indicate larger discrepancies in the performance of the farm types when defined by socio economic or emergy based indicators standard socio economic evaluation favours larger conventional systems that are cost efficient and financially independent emergy analysis however favours less productive organic farms which show greater ability to exploit free local resources and produce less stress on the local environment socio economic and emergy indicators show that small conventional farm types are the poorest performers overall analysis of emergy flows reveals for all farm types a high dependency on the wider socio economic system suggesting that within the current economic system agriculture itself has little ability to affect its sustainability the paper suggests a complementarity in the evaluation approaches their joint application can improve the quality of the decision making process in various stages of planning in agriculture and land use

valuation of the ecosystem services a psycho cultural perspective abstract valuation of ecosystems services has been a challenging issue for economists there is a growing concern to capture the total and incremental changes in services of different types of ecosystems mainly due to perturbations arising from anthropogenic activities market based valuation techniques have long been declared inadequate and a constructed market method such as the contingent valuation method albeit a robust tool does not seem to capture the expanse nuances and intricacies of many of the ecosystem services the paper attempts to address the lacunae in valuation of ecosystem services from a psychological perspective by arguing that the common person s perception of the ecosystem is quite different from what is conceptualized by conventional economists the paper shows how the ecological identity of individuals is revealed at various levels of the decision making hierarchy that is from local to regional and further onto a global level the paper builds upon insights from psychoanalytic psychology and environmental psychology further it outlines recent research findings from experimental psychology to redefine concepts such as ecological identity self other dichotomy and the fostering of identification with nature as issues that must be embraced in the valuation of ecosystem services extending the idea of relational goods and reciprocity the paper offers a deconstructed view of market forces and furthers the idea of interdisciplinary collaboration and cooperation in the valuation of ecosystem services in this perspective the dichotomy and schism between markets missing markets and non markets gets renovated and reconstructed beyond a utilitarian discourse

rethinking ecosystem services to better address and navigate cultural values ecosystem service approaches have become a prominent basis for planning and management cultural services and non use values are included in all major typologies and present some of the most compelling reasons for conserving ecosystems though many barriers exist to their explicit characterization the values that conform least well to economic assumptions variously lumped together with as cultural services have proven elusive in part because valuation is complicated by the properties of intangibility and incommensurability which has in turn led to their exclusion from economic valuation we argue that the effectiveness of the ecosystem services framework in decision making is thwarted by i conflation of services values and benefits and ii failure to appropriately treat diverse kinds of values we address this challenge by 1 distinguishing eight dimensions of values which have implications for appropriate valuation and decision making 2 demonstrating the interconnected nature of benefits and services and so the ubiquity of intangible values 3 discussing the implications of these propositions for ecosystem services research and 4 outlining briefly a research agenda to enable decision making that is ecologically appropriate and socially just because many ecosystem services co produce cultural benefits full characterization of services must address non material values through methods from diverse social sciences

sustainability as opportunity this paper explores the relationship between sustainability concepts and contractarian principles of distributional fairness a commitment to equality of opportunity between contemporaries entails that life opportunities should be nondiminishing from generation to generation defining sustainability as nondeclining utility is analytically suggestive but practically problematic given the uncertainties that surround future preferences and technologies life opportunities may be sustained however by providing future generations with specific endowments of reproduced capital technological capacity natural resources and environmental quality in this setting capital resource substitutions are defensible only if there is compelling evidence that they would benefit both present and future generations

alternative models of individual behaviour and implications for environmental policy abstract most insights of environmental economics are in line with the standard neoclassical economic model of rational behaviour formulated in terms of maximization of utility in general or of profits in particular the standard theory of environmental policy is a case in point however the maximization hypothesis and its methodological foundation have been criticized on many grounds related to a lack of either logical or empirical content moreover over the years a great many alternative models of behaviour have been proposed both criticism and alternatives are surveyed here attention is devoted to relevant insights from the philosophy of science the notion of methodological individualism and other criticism the alternative behavioural models include bounded rationality and satisficing lexicographic preferences habitual behaviour incommensurability and multicriteria evaluation and various models of behaviour under uncertainty major implications of the criticism and alternative models of individual behaviour for environmental policy theory are outlined

how deliberation affects stated willingness to pay for mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions an experiment respondents reported willingness to pay wtp for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions after structured group discussion or without this deliberation deliberation did not affect mean or median wtp but it increased the number of issues respondents considered with some issues becoming more frequently considered and others less survey only respondents considered issues relevant for responding to a request for a charitable contribution group mode participants considered issues relevant for a public policy assessment findings suggest that ordinary citizens can offer valid input to environmental policy decisions but that framing effects in ordinary wtp surveys may prevent them from providing such input

behavioral economics for environmental policy abstract the predictions of widely prescribed global and country level environmental policies at present are based mainly on mainstream economic models which treat individual actors to be unboundedly rational in their decision making in recent years however behavioral and experimental economists have found that the individual actors in many circumstances act within a bounded rationality framework suggesting that predictions based on the unbounded rationality models would be less valid while some of mainstream economists have already started adopting the bounded rationality based models in their academic discourse many environmental economists seem to be reluctant to use these alternative models of rationality in their research and policy prescriptions this paper highlights the implications of using bounded rationality models in environmental research in general and policymaking in particular

background inequality and differential participation in deliberative valuation lessons from small group discussions on forest conservation in colombia abstract deliberative monetary valuation dmv methods have been proposed as a more democratic alternative to traditional contingent valuation methods cvm for natural resource decision making these deliberative methods are subject to criticisms one issue of concern is that the socio economic inequalities among members of the deliberative group may severely impede communication and consequently distort deliberative outcomes to examine such possibility we applied the deliberative methodology in a case study of forest conservation in colombia we found that those individuals who assumed social environmental leadership positions tended to dominate group discussion nevertheless the variations in the capacity to engage in group deliberation were better explained by participants personal characteristics than external constraints or group pressure also there was little evidence that leadership and domination in group deliberation significantly influenced participants stated wtp we conclude that dmv is vulnerable to the background inequalities among group members the democratic potential of deliberative methods should be critically examined in terms of the capacity to communicate effectively and equally

do focus groups and individual interviews reveal the same information for natural resource valuation abstract focus groups and individual interviews have become accepted methods used in the initial stages of valuation research whether focus groups and individual interviews reveal similar valuation information has not been thoroughly studied the research tests the hypothesis that focus groups yield the same ecosystem service information as do individual interviews the research also explores how the focus group and individual interview data might differ the analysis shows that focus groups and individual interviews are not substitutes they yield different information about ecosystem services and resource uses

multiattribute elicitation of wilderness preservation benefits a constructive approach abstract this paper contributes to the development of a constructive approach to evaluating environmental resources using a version of multiattribute value elicitation in a group setting section 1 discusses the assumptions and practices of group multiattribute elicitation for public policy decisions the good of interest is a potential doubling of designated wilderness areas in british columbia two groups totalling 28 subjects participated in intensive half day workshops in which they provided judgments regarding the amounts of tax revenues from forest industry activities each thought provincial residents should forego to achieve specified increases in wilderness preservation subjects were asked to consider direct and passive use values spiritual values and ecological service values subjects were also asked to consider separately the interests of the current generation and future generations of residents and to provide judgments regarding the marginal benefits of increasing preservation an initial aggregated valuation question was followed by five more disaggregated questions subjects then compared and reconciled their value judgments for the aggregated and disaggregated questions the results are generally comparable to those of a contingent valuation referendum based survey for the same valuation issues

setting the limits to extraction a biophysical approach to mining activities abstract while the mining industry is steadfastly committed to the goal of increasing extraction of minerals the failure to recognize the existence of biophysical constraints to extraction results in massive degradation to socio ecological systems in this paper we propose an innovative approach for analyzing mineral extraction which links the use and management of natural resources by means of the stock flow fund service model developed by georgescu roegen mining is a productive process that not only depletes minerals ores but also affects other natural resources that are needed to maintain life supporting processes over time the central claim is the need of recognizing the existence of biophysical limits to extraction in order to manage natural resources as irreplaceable providers of ecosystem services by providing a new conceptualization for operationalizing the ecosystem services approach based on the stock flow fund service model we intend to challenge the current extractivist narrative that assumes unregulated practices monetary indicators technological advancements and substitutable resources we argue that limits to mining activities should depend on a biophysical evaluation of the effects of these activities on the environment furthermore social deliberation is required to determine whether extraction should occur and to what extent it is socially acceptable while still maintaining the integrity of socio ecological systems

discourse based valuation of ecosystem services establishing fair outcomes through group deliberation discourse based methods involving small groups of citizens have yet to be thoroughly engaged in the practice of ecosystem valuation this remains true despite the fact that many ecosystem goods and services such as clean air biodiversity and unpolluted lakes and rivers are considered to be public goods the conventional application of ecosystem valuation relies heavily on methodologies such as contingent valuation in which individuals are asked to express the value they attach to ecosystem goods and services in social isolation the difference between the public nature of ecosystem services and their valuation through individual expression has thus recently led to calls for more deliberative forms of environmental valuation because the allocation of ecosystem services directly affects many people and raises normative questions about social equity it is argued that carefully designed discursive methods will help ensure the achievement of social equity goals in this paper we examine the theoretical and normative assumptions that rest beneath the proposed turn towards discourse based methods and identify procedures for testing their application in the field 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

deliberative monetary valuation dmv and democratic valuation dv a response to bartkowski and lienhoop 2017 abstract bartkowski and lienhoop 2017 comment on the dv approach which i proposed in an earlier issue they conclude that dmv overcomes some flaws of conventional stated preference sp methods addresses many of my concerns and at the same time avoids some of the problems generated by dv several of their comments are debatable a closer look at dmv in comparison with dv and conventional sp methods shows that bartkowski and lienhoop s dmv approach addresses only one out of six major issues with conventional sp methods the lack of opportunities for group discussion my conclusion therefore remains unaffected due to the many technical issues with measuring individual willingness to pay wtp valuations based on majority voting principles are not only more transparent and more democratically legitimate than conventional sp or dmv they may also produce superior proxies for aggregated individual wtp

computers and the demand for skilled labour industry and establishment level panel evidence for the uk we use two united kingdom panel data sets to investigate skill upgrading in the united kingdom and how it has been affected by computerisation census data reveals that most aggregate skill upgrading is explained by within establishment rises in skill composition such upgrading is significantly related to computerisation a relation that is robust to different worker and computer types endogeneity human capital upgrading and other technology measures

on the intergenerational allocation of natural resources it is known hartwick and others that under standard assumptions a society that invests in reproducible capital the competitive rents on its current extraction of exhaustible resources will enjoy a consumption stream constant in time it is shown here that this result can be interpreted as saying that an appropriately defined stock of capital including the initial endowment of resources is being maintained intact and that consumption can be interpreted as the interest on that patrimony this seems like a useful rule of thumb for policy

oecd organisational discourse peer reviews and sustainable development an ecological institutionalist perspective as part of the recent ideational turn in research on international organisations the study of organisational discourse has gained popularity yet ecological economics has thus far paid little attention to the role of organisations as sites for the discursive battles over the meaning of sustainable development for an international organisation without regulatory powers such as the oecd organisation for economic cooperation and development discourse is the main vehicle for policy influence but it also plays a key role in re defining the organisation s identity and authority the oecd s organisational discourse has been strongly dominated by modern mainstream economics and has given little room for marginalised discourses this paper compares from the perspective of institutionally oriented ecological economics ioee and borrowing from critical discourse analysis the experience from attempts to integrate the concept of sustainable development within two oecd peer review mechanisms the economic surveys and the environmental performance reviews the extent to which the respective conceptions of sustainable development in the two reviews are in line with the principles of ioee and the reasons for the apparent failure of sustainable development discourse to gain foothold within the organisation are analysed

disaggregated economic impact analysis incorporating ecological and social trade offs and techno institutional context a case from the western ghats of india economic valuation of ecosystem benefits and their aggregation in a benefit cost analysis bca framework is the norm in mainstream environmental economics but valuation and bca have also attracted criticisms internal criticisms point to the absence of alternative scenarios in valuation overlooking of ecological trade offs and dis services and inattention to context others criticize aggregation across diverse stakeholders and the problem of non monetizable benefits and dismiss bca as fatally flawed they suggest approaches such as deliberative decision making and multi criteria analysis we propose a middle path that uses the strengths of economic analysis for decision support while avoiding the pitfalls we disaggregate economic impacts by stakeholder groups link ecosystem changes to benefits as well as dis benefits and examine how socio technological context shapes the magnitude of economic impact we illustrate this approach by studying the impact of creating the biligiri rangaswamy temple wildlife sanctuary in the western ghats forests of southern india our analysis shows that while some stakeholders are net beneficiaries others are net losers changes in forest rights irrigation technologies and ecosystem dynamics influence the magnitude of benefits and sometimes convert gainers into losers such disaggregated analysis can provide useful information for deliberative decision making and important academic insights on how economic value is generated

integrating non monetary and monetary valuation methods softgis and hedonic pricing abstract in order to address the increasing need for improved linkages between different value perspectives we examine the possibility of integrating two valuation methods the non monetary softgis and monetary hedonic pricing we find them compatible and their output more comprehensive compared to traditional valuation based on one value perspective the public participatory softgis survey delivers information on the perception of urban green spaces which we use as a criterion for dividing green space categories in a hedonic pricing model we find that the perception expressed in the survey is generally consistent with the impact on property prices in the case of formal green spaces however it is inconsistent when it comes to informal ones places identified as lacking well maintained greenery exert a positive influence on property prices while positively evaluated informal green spaces had no impact at all we identify the latter as a typical trade off between different value perspectives informal green spaces are perceived differently following a monetary and a non monetary approach

valuing nature from environmental impacts to natural capital abstract economic valuation of natural and environmental assets is now a well established practice economic analysis provides several methods for discovering the impact on social welfare associated with changes in the ability of these assets to provide different goods and services in general terms these valuation exercises have been performed in the framework of environmental impact assessment or more generally cost benefit analysis there is however an increasing demand nowadays to go beyond this framework and to value natural capital natural resource stocks land and ecosystems as such there are two main reasons for this new demand on the one hand sustainability requires that proper account should be taken of capital depreciation and therefore there is a need to value natural capital changes this valuation process nevertheless only makes sense when some kind of substitution between natural and other forms of capital is allowed on the other hand there is also an increasing tendency to demand that the stock of natural capital present in a given territory be valued either to discover one of the main components of social wealth or to help adequately plan changes in land use yet whereas conventional valuation methods are probably adequate to fulfill the first task this is less true in the case of the second while even more difficulties arise in connection with the third one even if at first sight the process appears conceptually identical these tasks are of a different order of magnitude as the experience of both the world bank and the statistics division of the united nations in this respect clearly shows

bringing stakeholder values into environmental policy choices a community based estuary case study this paper discusses a methodology for joining deliberation and analysis using the case study example of a national estuary program planning effort in tillamook bay or usa we describe the development of a community based evaluation tool that links actions proposed by technical experts e g biologists ecologists engineers to restore functioning of the tillamook bay estuary with the values and concerns expressed by community residents this task required the explicit consideration of trade offs across multiple benefits costs and risks we describe the design and results of an evaluation workbook developed with input from both the epa staff and community residents that provided insight to decision makers by presenting participants with explicit choices across the key dimensions and consequences of proposed actions the final section of the paper discusses the successes and limitations of the project in relation to evaluation needs associated with other environmental policy initiatives 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

eliciting public values for complex policy decisions several approaches exist to illuminate and clarify public values relevant for making public policy decisions these include surveys indirect and direct value elicitation focus groups and public involvement this paper describes a new approach called the public value forum which combines elements of focus groups and direct multiattribute value elicitation techniques two public value forums were conducted with selected members of the west german public to elicit values relevant for setting long term energy policies the purposes of conducting the value forums were to examine the feasibility of eliciting values from laypeople and combining them with factual assessments of experts to determine the extent to which values elicited formally conflict with values elicited informally and to assess the advantages and disadvantages of the public value forum the results indicate that the public value forum is feasible that the participants felt comfortable with the procedure and that they were eager to resolve inconsistencies between their intuitive judgments and the multiattribute models there was substantial conflict between the formally and informally elicited values however the participants were able to resolve those conflicts in the course of the value forum tending towards more moderate alternatives in the process the public value forum provided useful information for the policy process and education for the participants however because it is expensive and time consuming its main application may involve small samples of opinion leaders and stakeholder representatives rather than large representative samples of the general public

applied fairness theory and rationing policy in the past few years several economists notably duncan foley hal varian e a pazner and david schmeidler have produced a novel analytical theory of fairness in the distribution of resources in contradistinction to the efficiency of their allocation this work is primarily philosophical in orientation being concerned primarily with the logical underpinnings of an analysis of fair division rather than with its application here i offer a nontechnical introduction to the subject providing a few new results about the construction but this is only a preliminary to an attempt to show how fairness theory can be used to study policy employing the issue of rationing of commodities as an illustration persons who design public policy are typically at least as concerned with issues of equity as with allocative efficiency the economist s influence is therefore impeded by his inability to deal with issues of fairness in applied problems fairness theory perhaps for the first time provides an analytic instrument for the purpose inevitably it must of course rest upon value judgments as well as observable relationships but what is remarkable about fairness theory is that both the behavioral relationships and the value judgments on which it is based are essentially those used in the standard welfare analysis of resource allocation in both the basic data are consumer preferences and production relationships and in both the basic value judgment is that the desires of the affected individuals rather than those of some superior arbitrator must count our illustrative policy issue the rationing of commodities has reemerged with the fuel problem here i will examine the choice between two points rationing arrangements under which consumers are each issued a fixed number of ration points redeemable at a fixed points price pg per gallon of gasoline or at another coupon price p h per gallon of heating oil etc the consumer is thereby subjected to a second budget constraint expressed in ration points rather than money economists have suggested that the efficiency of such a rationing system can be improved if it is accompanied by a white market in which consumers with unwanted ration coupons can sell them to others at a market clearing money price i will show that while there is a valid efficiency argument favoring the white market arrangement over one in which the sale of ration coupons is prohibited fairness analysis yields a presumption that goes the other way this may provide some justification for the apparently widespread suspicion of the fairness of white markets among noneconomists

how to quickly get a job the transition from higher education to french labour market by a survival model this article analyses how long former university students stay unemployed when searching for a new job after the leaving of the french higher education cox duration models are used to account for the proportional hypothesis the main result of this article is that the worker s recruitment is based more on the choice of the faculty of initial training than the educational level attainment some policy implications are derived from our results to give some recommendations for individual job search and policy makers in education

equity considerations in economic and policy analysis there is little doubt that equity considerations play some role in human decision making this can be seen through statements that we are all created equal or that we have equal rights this can also be seen through some of the transfer mechanisms that societies are willing to put in place for the benefits of the poor or the malnourished in spite of this evidence the role of equity in resource allocation remains poorly understood most economic analyses tend to focus on efficiency issues and avoid addressing distribution issues as argued by sen 1987 1992 as long as human behavior is affected by equity considerations it seems that economics could be made more productive by paying greater attention to welfare distribution at the center of equity is whether and how to distinguish between people in terms of their needs their abilities their contributions and their individual rights people being different at least some of their differences seem to be relevant to the economic evaluation of equity issues at this point it remains somewhat unclear how to approach such issues the current debate about equity has been profoundly influenced by rawls s theory of justice rawls s theory is based on the concept of justice as fairness 1 it relies on a so called original position where individuals do not yet know their exact position in society rawls suggests that a society is just if its current members would find the original position fair rawls s views have been influential yet controversial part of the debate comes in part from some antagonism between equity and rights e g nozick and private property rights are often seen as contributing to inequalities of wealth in modern society the objective of this paper is to explore equity issues with a special focus on interactions between efficiency equity and the role of information in resource allocation in the next

agreeing to pay under value disagreement reconceptualizing preference transformation in terms of pluralism with evidence from small group deliberations on climate change abstract plural values contribute to multiple arrays of expressed preferences conventionally preference convergence toward consensus among initially disagreeing decision makers is understood in terms of diminishing value differences a cogent account of consensual decision that respects non diminishing value plurality is lacking instead there is a theoretic expectation for categorical consistency between subjective values and expressed preferences valuing agents in social interaction are expected to indicate identical preference orderings only if they hold correspondingly identical categories of values this expectation precludes meaningful conceptualization of preference convergence under divisive normative dispositions an alternative framework is proposed and illustrated by results from a designed deliberative forum on australia s climate change policy data were analyzed based on q methodology results show that small group deliberations enabled effective communication between distinctive subjective positions and broadened understandings between individuals while a consensual decision gained progress no identified value discourse diminished below a significant degree observed changes in values did not run parallel to the converging preferences suggesting a decline in value preference consistency these changes nonetheless are amenable to the principle of value pluralism an alternative rationality concept is needed to account for this moral ideal within economics

are litigation and collective bargaining complements or substitutes for achieving gender equality a study of the british equal pay act we present a socio legal case study of the recent equal pay litigation wave in britain which saw an unprecedented increase in the number of claims triggered in part by the entry of no win no fee law firms into this part of the legal services market although the rise in litigation led to greater adversarialism in pay bargaining litigation and collective bargaining mostly operated as complementary mechanisms in advancing an equality agenda although there are limits to the effectiveness of law driven strategies in the face of organisational pressures to canalise and diffuse human rights litigation may be a more potent force for social change than some recent accounts have suggested

computers and the changing skill intensity of jobs this paper investigates the impact of computer usage at work and other job features on the changing skills required of workers it compare skills utilization in britain at three data points 1986 1992 and 1997 using proxies for the level of skills actually used in jobs this study questions the validity of investigating the facts about and the sources of rising skills by using just educational attainment or occupational grouping data this paper finds that job skills have increased more quickly for women than for men these increases are more extensive than those captured by changes in the occupational class structure the spread of computer usage is very strongly associated with the process of upskilling and accounts in part for narrowing of the gender skills gap expanded use of quality circles is also linked to upskilling evidence for any direct role of trade in inducing skills increases is weak using the qualification held or occupation as a skills measure can lead to erroneous conclusions as to the origin of skills changes

aggregation and deliberation in valuing environmental public goods starting from a distinction between kantian principle based and utilitarian preference based approaches in political theory this essay argues that we may understand normative judgments individuals make about policy to express principled views of the public interest or purpose not private preferences about their own consumption opportunities these judgments in other words state opinions about what we ought to do as a society rather than report preferences about what i want as a utility maximizer this essay then argues that contingent valuation can take into account these kinds of judgments which dominate public discourse about the environment only if it moves toward a deliberative discursive jury like research method emphasizing informed discussion leading toward a consensus based on an argument about the public interest

biofuel as social fuel introducing socio environmental services as a means to reduce global inequity the increasing cultivation of energy crops for biofuel production has significantly altered the focus of the agricultural sector but the impact of biofuel production and use is not merely an agricultural one even more importantly it is an issue which likely promotes inequitable conditions and the social conflict of different basic needs within this context the dominant argument criticizes the growing demand for biofuels in the north to compromise food security and sovereignty in the south in order to address these trade offs and conflicts the objective of this paper is the introduction of a conceptual framework of socio environmental services by expanding the construct of environmental services to explicitly include the social dimension it shall accommodate for the fact that the provision of environmental services is often embedded in a complex system of global economic ecological as well as social interdependencies recently the concept of payments for environmental services pes has received much attention with respect to its potential contribution to both environmental sustainability and the economic alleviation of poverty by linking the idea of payments for socio environmental services pses to the three functions of justice its beneficial impact may be more fully tapped

beyond rationality towards reasonableness enriching the theoretical foundation of deliberative monetary valuation economic valuation is often deemed an important source of information for land use decisions stated preference sp methods are a particularly potent class of economic valuation methods but they are also particularly controversial in response to accumulating criticism of sp deliberative monetary valuation dmv has been proposed as an alternative approach and has gained considerable attention in recent years however being a combination of elements from two theories neoclassical welfare economics and theory of deliberative democracy it lacks a convincing consistent theoretical foundation in our paper we propose some clarifying adjustments regarding rationality assumptions and aggregation issues by drawing upon the work of amartya sen we find that many of his ideas lead to a harmonisation of dmv s theoretical foundations e g meta rankings of preferences impartial spectator and the plurality of impartial reasons

the evolution of preferences why sovereign preferences may not lead to sustainable policies and what to do about it abstract the conventional economic paradigm assumes that tastes and preferences are exogenous to the economic system and that the economic problem consists of optimally satisfying those preferences tastes and preferences usually do not change rapidly and in the short term this assumption makes sense sustainability is an inherently long term problem and in the long run it does not make sense to assume tastes and preferences are fixed and given if preferences are expected to change over time and under the influence of education advertising changing cultural assumptions etc the old assumption of consumer sovereignty is not adequate different criteria of optimality are needed how preferences change how they relate to the goal of sustainability and how they can or should be actively influenced to satisfy the new criteria needs to be determined ecological economics has emphasized the three rank ordered goals of ecological sustainability fair distribution and allocative efficiency this paper examines how preferences evolve and change over time and the implications of this for developing policies that meet these three goals in democratic societies

multiple attribute decision analysis for ecosystem management abstract implementation of an ecosystem approach to natural resource management requires evaluation of a broad array of ecological services in a multidimensional community based watershed approach that empowers people to make informed management decisions conventional economic approaches that assign values to ecological services contingent valuation or that evaluate the efficiency of preserving and restoring those services cost benefit analysis are quite limited for this purpose in addition to the methodological difficulties encountered in applying contingent valuation and cost benefit analysis several problems occur when nonmarket values of ecological services are estimated independently of ecosystem planning and management multiple attribute decision making madm is an alternative conceptual framework for evaluating and selecting land and water resource management systems lwrms advantages of madm are that it facilitates community based collaborative decision making avoids some of the ethical theoretical and practical shortcomings of conventional economic approaches does not require assigning monetary values to ecological services allows consideration of multiple attributes and is not culturally biased the madm model described in this paper explains how a property manager selects the most preferred lwrms for a property based on their multiple stochastic attributes application of the model requires determination of the technically feasible lwrms for a property and specification of the socially acceptable ranges of attributes this information is combined with economic biophysical simulations to derive the efficient combination of attributes and lwrms for a property the property manager then selects the most preferred combination of attributes from the efficient combinations of attributes for a property using utility maximization surrogate worth tradeoff free iterative search analytical hierarchy process aspiration reservation based decision support system or stochastic dominance a watershed alliance can evaluate the sustainability of the most preferred lwrms for properties in a watershed based on a weak or strong sustainability criterion if the alliance determines that the most preferred lwrms are not sustainable then an index of attributes is used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of alternative public policies for stimulating the adoption of more sustainable lwrms

democracy and valuation a reply to schlapfer 2016 abstract this paper is a critical appraisal of schlapfer s 2016 proposal of a democratic valuation dv methodology to value public goods while we appreciate attempts to address the shortcomings of conventional stated preference techniques we have some reservations regarding dv our paper critically reviews the following characteristics of the proposed methodology i referendum format as decision making mechanism ii single dimensionality in the description of the policy issue to be valued and iii preference formation through provision of detailed information finally we calibrate democratic valuation against another alternative to conventional stated preference approaches namely deliberative monetary valuation dmv we argue that dmv addresses many of schlapfer s concerns regarding stated preference techniques and at the same time avoids some of the problems generated by dv

limits to cba in uk and european environmental policy retrospects and future prospects this paper reviews the contemporary debate and the now long standing role of cba in uk and european environmental policy appraisal epa and looks forward to possible future applications the position taken is that despite its limitations cba still has an important part to play in epa however with the increasingly contested nature of environmental and related public policies and outcomes its role will become less prescriptive and its findings more constrained by social justice and ethical imperatives future cba is more likely to continue to flourish as a component in a wider policy analysis and decision support system whatever decision support system is eventually adopted its value will be judged on how well it aids real policymakers operating iteratively in the non linear real world political economy

deliberative monetary valuation and the evidence for a new value theory economists concerned with validity are combining stated preference methods with participatory deliberation to address on going criticism deliberative monetary valuation dmv uses formal methods of deliberation to express values for environmental change in monetary terms however the results have begun to define different realms of value reflecting pluralism in public concern over environmental change reviewing empirical dmv studies evidences a range of issues regarded as external to economics and the validity of its methods issues which are typically kept at arms length by most environmental economists namely multiple values incommensurability and lexicographic preferences social justice fairness and non human values

the crowding out of complex social goods the valuation of ecosystem services to inform natural resource management and development has gained acceptance in many arenas yet contemporary economic valuation is constrained to the appraisal of simple goods that generate benefits that accrue to individuals neglecting complex goods that generate benefits that accrue to society more broadly methodological barriers to the valuation of complex social goods have led to their frequent omission from natural resource management deliberations the prevailing valuation paradigm that focuses on simple individual goods may erode conservation efforts by crowding out the institutions and behaviours that support socially constructed ecosystem service values erosion of these values ultimately harms the environment and society as a whole the institutionalisation of appropriate methods for estimating the value of complex social goods alongside existing methods for valuing simple individual goods within international conservation development and policy making discourses is therefore an important evolution for sustainable natural resource management

preference refinement in deliberative choice experiments for ecosystem service valuation choice experiments have gained considerable popularity in ecosystem service valuation in a one shot survey respondents are faced with a strenuous task asking them to discover and monetize their preferences for often unfamiliar ecosystem services in a previously unknown hypothetical market situation we present a deliberative choice experiment that aims to generate well rationalized value estimates for policy advice two aspects of deliberation discussion and time to reflect are examined in terms of their effect on preference refinement we find more comprehensive choice motives after deliberation as well as indications for preference adjustment and a slight increase in choice certainty jel q51 q57

fairness stewardship and sustainable development abstract the welfare economic concept of fairness offers an attractive axiomatic foundation for the popular notion of stewardship fairness emphasizes the ex ante equal standing of all persons across and within generations this highlights the inextracability of poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability especially in the agrarian tropics where biodiversity loss deforestation and desertification are growing global concerns