ABSTRACT

The objective of the paper is to expose clearly one essential part of standard environmental economics-namely, the externality approach-as well as more recent developments in this field for achieving a solution at the interface between life-support ecosystems and economic processes. The overall concern is about pricing indirect-sometimes unrecognized-environmental goods, services or disservices, which is of paramount importance for economic analysis. Market, public and shadow prices-paid as well as unpaid priceratios-are supposed to be used in a complementary way as decision criteria for ecologic-economic prospects.