ABSTRACT
As all environmental economists well know, ad nauseam, on 24 March 1989 the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. Less well known, on the same day I was busy working on my dissertation on the effects of substitute environmental goods on existence value. For better or for worse, I bumbled into one of the key issues surrounding the magnitude of natural resource damages associated with the oil spill and, more broadly, one of the most active research literatures in the annals of environmental economics.
