Valuation was a dominant issue in environmental
economics and an obvious target for critique—and a
field where constructive alternatives could be provided.
The outline of the institutional perspective
above provides a direct basis for critical assessments
of cost–benefit analysis and contingent valuation in
relation to environmental issues: many relevant
factors cannot be quantified or measured in terms of
prices, and furthermore prices basically reflect historical
and existing power structures; value monism does
not make sense; marginal values should not be
confused with total values; decision situations should
be illuminated with all their conflicts instead of
suggesting simplified dsolutionsT; fundamental moral
dilemmas should not be passed over; cost–benefit
analyses tend to be used for policy justification and to
relieve policy makers from responsibility by hiding
behind technical calculations. As decisions must be
taken, and valuation is unavoidable, the core task is to
suggest alternatives that can support political decision
making in a more acceptable way than cost–benefit
analyses. Sfderbaum’s positional analysis was an
early example of such an alternative, and in recent
years multicriteria analysis and deliberative approaches
have received much attention from ecological
economists