Valuing Foreign Lives and Settlements
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13037337 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David A Dana (Northwestern University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-26 |
| Publication date | 2010-07-14 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2152-2812 • E-ISSN: 2194-5888 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2202/2152-2812.1003 |
| OpenAlex | W2163279662 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 17 |
Cost-benefit analysis in the United States for policy and legal purposes traditionally has been highly parochial, excluding not just losses or gains of welfare to non-U.S. residents from a given policy but also excluding any losses or gains in welfare U.S. residents would experience as a result of impacts to foreigners and foreign settlements. In the climate change context, this approach has meant that cost-benefit analyses for the costs of unmitigated climate change to the United States value at zero the losses that U.S. residents will bear as a result of the direct, adverse impacts of climate change to foreign lives and settlements. This article argues that there are sound theoretical reasons to include such welfare losses in a cost-benefit analysis, and that doing so requires going beyond revealed preference data to consider stated preference surveys. The article presents the findings of internet-based surveys that strongly suggest that the implicit assumption of the current approach to cost-benefit analysis in the United States—that U.S. residents value foreign lives and settlements that may be destroyed by climate change at zero—is untenable
Climate change · Context (archaeology · Cost–benefit analysis · Economics · Foreign policy · Geography · Human settlement · Market economy · Microeconomics · Political science · Politics · Preference · Public economics · Value (mathematics · Welfare · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Law
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2023 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |