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Non-Market Valuation

Informally Refereed

Abstract

In addition to commodities such as timber, forest ecosystems provide an array of goods and services that are not priced in markets but maintain, to a large degree, the characteristics of public goods (non-rivalry and non-excludability). Markets do not recognize scarcity of non-market resources and cannot be relied upon to allocate these resources to their highest and best use. In addition, the production of commodities can diminish the non-market values of forests by more than the gain in commodity benefits, leading to losses in social welfare. Non-market valuation methods, as illustrated in this section, have been developed and applied to address these problems of sub- optimal resource allocation.

Citation

Holmes, Thomas P. 2003. Non-Market Valuation. In: Sills, Erin O.; Abt, Karen Lee, eds. Forests in a market economy. 2003. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 301.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/6369