When I started this blog in 2012, I considered – having looked at many other blogs – that posts should be short and frequent, and my early posts were all well below 1,000 words.  But it gradually became apparent that for many topics I could not present the sort of sustained argument I wanted to make within that limit. I do aspire to persuade, and not just address readers who already agree with what I say.  Hence my posts became longer and less frequent.   Many are in the region of 2,000 to 3,000 words, and the longest – a review of Dieter Helm’s Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet – extends to some 8,000 words.

Through WordPress I can access statistics giving some idea of which of my 54 posts have received most views.  The statistics are not as helpful as they could be, with a high proportion of views classified under the catch-all category of “Home page / Archives”.  Based on the classification of the remainder, some posts have been viewed far more times than others.  The ten most-viewed posts are as below, in descending order of views (counted from the date of posting to the end of 2018).

1. Some Economics of a Carbon Tax (20/2/2013)
2. Of Fish, Fishers and Consumers (23/6/2013)
3. Explaining Environmental Policy Failure (1/12/2017)
4. Pollution Control and Output (30/12/2016)
5. A Valuation Case Study: The Great Barrier Reef (15/7/2017)
6. Green Space: An Important Use of Urban Land (28/7/2013)
7. Net National Product and Sustainability (17/5/2017)
8. In Defence of the Linear Demand Function (21/6/2016)
9. Reducing Pollution with a Combined Tax and Subsidy (6/9/2012)
10. Lessons from the Industrial Revolution (7/3/2013)

Of the less-viewed posts, the following are some with which I am especially pleased:

• The Role of Contingent Valuation (21/1/2013)
• Do We Need a Renewables Policy? (1/2/2014)
• Zone Definition and Travel Cost Valuations (21/6/2016)
• Constant Consumption with Resource Depletion (14/12/2016)

While some posts relate to matters that were in the news at a particular time, all are intended to address or illustrate more general issues in the field of environmental and natural resource economics and related disciplines.  I’m not trying to build up an encyclopaedia – which would be absurdly ambitious -, but I hope that some may find my posts, including some of the older ones, a useful resource.  With that hope comes a responsibility to try to improve older posts where possible, which may include explaining points more clearly, improving layout and – yes – on occasion correcting errors.  In that spirit I have recently made substantial amendments to Net National Product and Sustainability and minor changes to several other posts.