ABSTRACT
For reasons that have never been made entirely clear, this effort became politically unwelcome in Congress, which quickly enjoined BEA from pursuing its long-range plan, pending an independent assessment of the possibilities and problems associated with such social accounting reforms. (See Joy E. Hecht, “Environmental Accounting: Where Are We Now, Where Are We Heading,” Resources 135, Spring 1999.) A distinguished NRC panel, chaired by Nordhaus and entrusted with that assessment task, has now produced the result of its deliberations, Nature’s Numbers: Expanding the National Economic Accounts to Include the Environment (National Academy of Sciences Press, 1999).
