In some, but not all, contexts, respondents to stated preference valuation studies state a willingness to pay (WTP) higher than what lab or field experiments indicate is the actual amount they would pay. However, several ex ante survey design strategies and ex post calibration techniques can be...

The Environmental Protection Agency's new Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) regulations are forcing some farms to export livestock manure to off-farm acres. The regulation compliance cost depends on the willingness of neighboring crop producers to accept or pay for the manure. This...

A choice experiment of consumers from five Mid-Atlantic states was conducted to compare marginal willingness to pay for fresh tomatoes with the attributes locally grown, state marketing program promoted, and organic from either a grocery store or farmers’ market. Data were analyzed using...

Stated choice experiments about ecosystem changes involve complex information. This study examines whether the format in which ecosystem information is presented to respondents affects stated choice outcomes. Our analysis develops a utility-maximizing model to describe respondent behavior. The...

Government programs that help agricultural producers manage risk may have environmental consequences. In recent years, premium subsidies for crop insurance have been increased substantially to encourage greater producer participation. Using detailed, producer-level crop insurance contract data...

Herein we explore how money pumps from rational choice theory and nudges from behavioral economics work toward helping create better environmental policy. We examine the role of money pumps in environmental policy, and whether policymakers can use nudges to "supercharge" incentives. We summarize...

A watershed-based modeling system is developed to assess alternative nutrient abatement policies, including fertilizer taxes, application caps, and uniform reductions. A microeconometric model of nutrient use is estimated using farm-level data, prices, and spatially detailed soil and land...

Irrigation water demand is estimated using field-level panel data from Kansas over 16 years. The cost of pumping varies over time due to changes in energy prices and across space due to differences in the depth to water. Exploiting this variation allows us to estimate the demand elasticity while...

We develop a positive mathematical programming model to investigate the impact of climate change on land use in the prairie pothole region of western Canada, with particular focus on wetlands retention. We examine the effect of climate change and biofuel policies that are implemented to mitigate...

A Cobb-Douglas stochastic frontier function is estimated for the cow-calf enterprises in the Texas Rolling Plains using Standardized Performance Analysis (SPA) data. We find that factors promoting higher herd productivity include machinery investment, pasture-quality improvement, and protein...