ABSTRACT
The conference that initiated this volume attempted to offer insight into how nonmarket valuation could be used in the assessment of damages to natural resources. A research dialogue has subsequently developed among many of the authors of chapters in this volume and among many more of our colleagues engaged in actual damage assessments and other forms of nonmarket valuation. In our discussions in this final chapter we recognize the feedback that damage assessments are providing to the research undertaken in resource and environmental economics, and acknowledge some previously unrecognized assumptions underlying methods used in non-market valuation—assumptions that have been exposed by the harsh discipline of litigation.
