Does Scale Matter? Cost Effectiveness of Agricultural Nutrient Abatement When Target Level Varies

Agricultural production is facing high requirements on nutrient runoff reduction. Furthermore, the reductions should by done efficiently. For instance, the European Water Framework Directive calls for cost-effectiveness from schemes of measures to fulfill the target of good water quality in European river basins. In this paper we analyse the implications of target level variation on efficiency properties of agricultural phosphorus abatement. We analyse the robustness of cost-effectiveness as the scheme of measures is adopted from another, identical river basin with different target level on total phosphorus abatement. We find that even between homogeneous regions the cost-effective scheme of measures is unique for all target levels of reduction, and that the costs of adoting cost-effective allocations out of scale are high.