The importance of ecosystem functions for humankind is well known. But only few attempts have been undertaken to estimate the economic value of these ecosystem services. In particular, indirect methods are rarely used, even though they are most suitable for the task. This discrepancy is because...

Artisanal fishery in the Venice lagoon is a multi-target activity with a long tradition. It was the main fishing activity till the late '80s when, after the introduction and spread of the Manila clam (Tapes philippinarum), the mechanical clam harvesting started. A mass-balance model of the...

We develop and apply a new method for estimating the economic benefits of an environmental amenity. The method fits within the household production framework (Becker 1965), and is based upon the notion of estimating the derived demand for a privately traded option to utilize a freely-available...

The present research has been developed within the EU FP7 VECTORS project (http://www.marine-vectors.eu/). The main scope of the project (2011 - 2015) has been to evaluate, from a multilateral perspective, drivers, pressures and vectors of changes in marine life of three main European seas...

Ecosystem externalities arise when one use of an ecosystem affects its other uses through the production functions of the ecosystem.We use simulations from a size-spectrum ecosystem model to investigate the ecosystem externality created by fishing of multiple species. The model is based upon...

The problem of the commons is more important to our lives and thus more central to economics than a century ago when Katharine Coman led off the first issue of the American Economic Review. As the U.S. and other economies have grown, the carrying-capacity of the planet - in regard to natural...

This paper updates the existing meta-analysis in coral reef recreation taking into account the previous work of Brander et al. (2007) but considering some stated preference biases and/or effects. The present meta-analysis uses twice the number of observations as the previous one and sheds more...

The role of economic analysis in guiding the sustainable development of estuarine and coastal ecosystems is investigated based on a comprehensive review of the literature on the valuation of the recreation, cultural and aesthetic services. The implications of the findings for the sustainable...

By using ad hoc value transfer protocols, this paper offers a methodological contribution and provides accurate per hectare estimates of the economic value of some selected ecosystem services for all forest biomes in the world, identified following the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment taxonomy...