Valuing environmental factors in cost-benefit analysis using data envelopment analysis

Environmental cost-benefit analysis (ECBA) is used for the social evaluation of investment projects and policies that involve significant environmental impacts. Economic valuation of environmental impacts forms one of the critical steps of ECBA. We develop a new method for this purpose, which does not require price estimation for environmental impacts using stated or revealed preference methods. Our approach is based on data envelopment analysis (DEA), which is modified to ECBA by using absolute shadow prices instead of relative prices. We also discuss how the method can be used for sensitive analysis in ECBA. We illustrate the method by means of a hypothetical numerical example.