L'évaluation économique et la décision publique dans le domaine de l'environnement

The state of the art in the assessment of environmental policies shows the boom in eonometric studies seeking to estimate their advantages, using especially contingent valuation or hedonic regression methods. The documented knowledge of willing nesses to pay is now a reality for a number of environmental services. Which makes it possible to develop cost-benefit analyses in this area. Yet the connection with the decision-making process remains uncertain and conflictual. Indeed, the issues of efficiency and equity are heavily interlinked in the case of environmental policies, and economic experts are not the only ones to hold relevant information. This forces us to wonder about the institutional conditions of the production and use of cost· benefit analyses in a context where the risks of capture are high. In this respect, the system of organization which seems to function the best is based on a regulatory obligation 10 assess the efficiency of policies in terms of costs and advantages. The process of assessment must also he supervised to ensure the neutrality of the experts, and to prevent them from participating in the capture of or excessive volatility in public decision-making.