The Contingent Valuation Debate: Why Economists Should Care
解释了条件价值评估法的起源及其如何成为学术与法律辩论的焦点，该方法通过调查询问人们为政策付费的意愿，在政府决策中日益重要。
The contingent valuation method, wherein sample surveys are used to elicit individuals’ willingness to pay for certain types of policies, is playing an important role in government decision-making. The most prominent applications are in the valuation of damages to natural resources from oil spills. But the contingent valuation method will be more important still if it is used to expand the range of impacts included in applied benefit-cost analyses. This paper explains the origins of the contingent valuation method and the route through which it came to be the center of both an academic and a legal debate.