The economics of biodiversity

• Charles Kolstad
• Geoffrey Heal

Abstract
The impetus for this workshop is the importance that environmental economists understand better what biodiversity is and how it functions and contributes to goods and services that society values. Economists also need to know better whether and in what ways market and non-market mechanisms can realize some of the economic value of biodiversity, and provide incentives for its conservation. To progress on these goals, in April 2000, the convenors invited a select group of economists working in related areas to prepare papers on the subject for presentation at the workshop. We have also arranged for these papers to be published in a special issue of the journal Resource and Energy Economics. It is important to emphasize that this is a novel research area; consequently, we have given authors approximately a year to develop their ideas, culminating in a workshop to be held in the Spring of 2001. Because of the unusual nature of the topic, it would seem highly productive to expose authors to working versions of all the papers as well as discussion. Furthermore, we hope to involve ecologists as discussants in order to assure realistic representation of non-economics processes. As an incentive, the papers will ultimately be refereed and published (assuming the refereeing process is positive) in one of the leading field journals in the environmental and resource economics field: Resource and Energy Economics.