Upon completion of this course students will:
- Become familiar with alternative frameworks to analyze 
environmental impacts of human activities
- Understand how economists deal with benefit-cost analysis of 
alternative allocations of environmental goods where markets do 
not exist
- Learn how to employ a variety of environmental valuation 
methods and how to correctly apply them to different 
environmental problems

1. Introduction: Why Environmental Valuation?
2. Externalities, market failure, and the limitations of the 
System of National Accounts
3. Frameworks of analysis- Impact analysis- Cost-
Effectiveness Analysis- Damage Assessment- Risk Analysis- 
Benefit Cost Analysis
4. Benefit-Cost Analysis: The Mechanics-
Steps in a BCA- Measuring the costs- Measuring the benefits
5. Benefit-Cost Analysis: Discounting
6. Environmental Valuation: Methods to put a price tag on the 
environment
7. Overview of environmental valuation methods
8. Revealed preference methods- Travel Cost Analysis- Hedonic 
Pricing
9. Stated preference methods- Contingent valuation- Choice 
experiments
10. An application: Measuring the value of ecosystem services
11. Should we put a price tag on the environment? Some ethical 
considerations

Instructor expects students to follow the UGA Student Honor 
Code to be academically honest in all of academic work and not 
tolerate academic dishonesty of others.