This paper examines the extensive and intensive margin changes in land use in the U.S. likely to be induced by biofuel policies and the implications of these policies for GHG emissions over the 2007-2022 period. The policies considered here include the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) by itself as...

We analyze the effect of an emergence of biofuel industry on the Conservation Reserve Program. The government expenditure on Conservation Reserve Program needs to increase dramatically to keep the current scale of CRP program when the biofuel industry is considered. We propose that the...

In this paper we study U.S. wheat farmers’ willingness to pay for near infrared (NIR) sensor that can segregates wheat grains according to their protein concentration. We first develop a microeconomic optimization model of wheat farmers’ segregating and commingling decisions. Then we use...

The U.S. Federal Government implements environmental, biofuels and crop insurance programs that influence land use. They are not well-integrated in that cost savings from crop insurance subsidies are not acknowledged when screening land for retirement or when calculating the cost of land...

There have long been concerns that federal crop insurance subsidies may significantly impact land use decisions. It is well known that classical insurance market information asymmetry problems can lead to a social excess of risky land entering crop production. Our conceptual model shows that the...

The ethanol tariff is one of the instruments used by the government to encourage domestic ethanol production. Existing literature analyzing the market and welfare effects of the US ethanol tariff has concluded that removing the tariff would increase social surplus and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG)...

Interest in promoting Pollution Prevention (P2) has been increasing since 1991, following the passage of the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA) of 1990. As part of the PPA, facilities that are subject to the Toxics Releases Inventory (TRI) are required to disclose the number of incremental P2...