Sonja Kolstoe at the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis "On Balance" blog:
This was my first time attending a World Congress. As a non-market valuation economist specializing in revealed and stated preference methods, I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss these methods and network with others from around the globe. For me, the week started off on a high-note as Gina McCarthy, the opening keynote speaker, publicly praised stated preference methods and the rigor with which these studies are conducted. In a benefit-cost analysis (BCA), accounting for benefits of a policy often is more difficult than accounting for the costs, thus making non-market valuation a fundamental part of BCA. Methodological issues transcend differences in institutions, policies and applications, a major point and key takeaway from this conference. (Some of these issues are explored in a symposium in the Spring 2018 issue of the JBCA: The Application of BCA in Europe – Experiences and Challenges.)
Another highlight with direct applications to BCA was the policy session, “Best Practices in Revealed Preference Approaches for Nonmarket Valuation Methods that Inform Environmental Policy,” organized by Catherine Kling (Iowa State/Cornell University). The session included talks on best practices for hedonic property value studies, hedonic wage studies, and recreational demand models. The three papers presented in this session were commissioned by the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, and will be part of a future symposium on the topic in that journal.
The Best Practices session built on a recently published paper recommending best practices for stated preference studies (Johnston et al. 2017); this large scale effort in turn updated the findings in the report of the NOAA Blue Ribbon Panel on Contingent Valuation in 1993—an early effort that involved Nobel Prize winners Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow, as well as other prominent economists and sociologists. The papers presented in the session further underscore the importance of work by economists to produce robust estimates of non-market values that can be used in BCAs, and thereby support evidence-based policy decisions. ...
Don't read this if an increase in someone else's utility reduces your own (i.e., you are so jealous that people got to go to the World Congress and you didn't).
