In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Spencer Banzhaf, a professor at North Carolina State University, about the history of the field of environmental economics. Banzhaf discusses the development of the economic definition of value, the early influence of agricultural economists in government, the origins of Resources for the Future and its contributions to the field, and how the field of environmental economics may evolve moving forward.

References and recommendations:

“Pricing the Priceless: A History of Environmental Economics” by H. Spencer Banzhaf; https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pricing-the-priceless/417AAD8A445E8B64BAD6BC201D2F2163

“Scarcity” by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind; https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674987081

Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._7_(Beethoven)