Dirk Wolfson shows how sustainable development may be organized, valued and distributed by introducing situational contracting as an interactive and contextual mode of governance. Throughout the entire process of policy-making and delivery, situational contracts assign rights and responsibilities, fortifying the weakest link in democracy: the way in which political systems mind the preferences and ambitions of the people. This book importantly recognizes that efficiency and distribution are two sides of a coin that can be distinguished but not separated. Situational contracting does not judge distributional concerns, but reveals how parties in supply and demand think about fairness. It provides a road map for where we want to go, serving the prevailing ideology in implementing the trade between efficiency and fairness, like a democratic institutional arrangement should.
1. Introduction 1.1. About this book 1.2. Economic analysis and environmental policy: scope and limits 1.3. Cost-benefit analysis: a preview 1.4. Valuation, distribution and legitimacy 1.5. Short cuts: cost-effectiveness, standards, multi-criteria and workable competition 1.6. Global economic development and ecological constraints 2. Valuation 2.1. The 'Coase-solution' and emissions trading 2.2. Hedonic pricing, travel cost method and averting behaviour 2.3. Stated preferences: contingent valuation and choice experiments 2.4. Co- valuation and externalities in production functions 2.5. Persuasion 2.6. Fiscal instruments for managing preference 2.7. Innovation as externality on the supply side 2.8. Shadow prices or regulation? 2.9. Combining results, and sensitivity analysis 3. Distribution 3.1. Optimal allocation and fairness in distribution 3.2. Fiscal solutions 3.3. Distributional weights 3.4. Visions of justice 4. Governance 4.1. Cost-benefit analysis revisited 4.2. Interactive governance and information management 4.3. Situational contracting: implementation and empirical evidence 4.4. Situational solutions in the valuation and distribution of environmental policy 4.5. Summary and conclusions