This is a banner year for the Blue Ridge Parkway as it will celebrate its 75th Anniversary, but the parkway’s superintendent is reportedly submitting a request for emergency funding to the federal government.
WSOC-TV in Charlotte broke the story. They are reporting that while several stretches of the parkway remain closed because of this year’s brutal winter weather. Parkway officials have created an “emergency situation” so they can request for federal assistance as they work to reopen the entire parkway by spring.
What is the value of a cleaned up National Park as it celebrates its 75th anniversary? Is there any way to get at this value except by stated preferences? Can it be done with the travel cost method? Hedonics? Macro data? the National Longitudinal Survey? Is it and others like it fairly important problems? If 90% of the economics profession rejects stated preference methods do they have an alternative?
And while I'm at it, Andy Rooney style, what is "experimental" about choice experiments? If choice experiments are experimental then contingent valuation should be called the contingent valuation experiment method, shouldn't it?
