IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxford/v35y2019i1p109-119..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Valuing the invaluable: how much is the planet worth?

Author

Listed:
  • Colin Mayer

Abstract

This article explores the valuation of natural capital by critically analysing alternative approaches to it. It considers the problems associated with applying economic values to natural capital and the limitations of such exercises. It examines different methods that are more familiar to accountants than economists of using what is sometimes termed ‘an engineering approach’ to estimating the costs of maintaining and restoring existing assets. It considers the arguments that are used to justify the two. In particular, it addresses the question of what we are seeking to do by determining the value of natural capital—what is the question to which valuation is supposed to be the answer?

Suggested Citation

  • Colin Mayer, 2019. "Valuing the invaluable: how much is the planet worth?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 35(1), pages 109-119.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:35:y:2019:i:1:p:109-119.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/gry024
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Danny Z. X. Huang, 2021. "Environmental, social and governance (ESG) activity and firm performance: a review and consolidation," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(1), pages 335-360, March.
    2. Georgina M Mace, 2019. "The ecology of natural capital accounting," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 35(1), pages 54-67.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    accounting; valuation;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxford:v:35:y:2019:i:1:p:109-119.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/oxrep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.