The views presented in On Balance are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Society, its Board, or its members.

Throughout my career I have been aware of the use of benefit cost analysis (BCA) or engineering economics studies to justify new projects or capital investments for government agencies and private companies. It always struck me as curious that rarely do government councils require a post-project implementation return on investment study.

Benefit cost analysis is most powerful when it is applied in both  theory and reflective practice – from asking the questions “how can we evaluate this?” and “what economic information can best support this decision-making process?”  to “did this investment actually deliver what we thought it would?” providing data that can be appreciated in the reflection process post project and act as a baseline to be iterated upon.

The views presented in On Balance are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Society, its Board, or its members. 

This post first appeared as an essay in the Regulatory Review:https://www.theregreview.org/2026/02/04/dudley-valuing-the-benefits-of-reducing-fine-particles/

The New York Times reported recently that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) no longer plans to quantify the benefits of reducing exposure to certain air pollutants as it evaluates the need for regulation. In a final rule governing combustion turbines issued in January, EPA expressed concerns that its past “analytical practices often provided the public with a false sense of precision and more confidence regarding the monetized impacts of fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅) and ozone than the underlying science could fully support.” The rule announced that “to rectify this error,” EPA will no longer monetize the benefits associated with reducing these two pollutants.

The views presented in On Balance are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Society, its Board, or its members. 

This essay was originally published in The Regulatory Review, a publication of the Penn Program on Regulation.

As Cass Sunstein famously argued in a book published almost 25 years ago, the modern administrative state has become, in important respects, a benefit-cost state. Although benefit-cost analysis was once criticized as a deregulatory tool that would systematically disfavor environmental, health, and safety regulation, experience has increasingly shown otherwise.

The views presented in On Balance are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Society, its Board, or its members. 

At the 2025 SBCA annual conference in Washington DC, John Whitehead organized a panel session titled “Frontiers in Environmental Valuation” (at Vic Adamowicz’s suggestion). The session was presided over by Tim Haab and the panelists included Mark Dickie, University of Central Florida; Rob Johnston, Clark University; Jonathan Lee, East Carolina University; Frank Lupi, Michigan State University; Kent Messer, University of Delaware; George Parsons, University of Delaware; and Christian Vossler, University of Tennessee. In part the session arose because John and Tim (and Lala Ma) are editing a new Handbook on Environmental Valuation and the session participants were authors on several of the chapters. To kick off the discussion, Tim posed a fascinating question to the panel: “What will environmental valuation look like in 10 years?” The question resulted in a discussion from the panel members as well as several members of the audience. This blog post summarizes some of the themes that emerged, as well as our own thoughts and reflections on the topic. We hope it fosters discussion on the frontiers of valuation and promotes research on valuation.

1. Data