Researchers using questionnaires to elicit preferences must decide whether to include response options that allow respondents to express "no opinion." Using a split-sample design, we explore the implications of alternative answer formats including and not including no-opinion responses in an...

A number of studies have questioned how successfully paid land diversion has been adapted to address broad environmental policy concerns. Similar evaluations of cost-sharing programs have not been performed. This paper uses a revealed preference approach to estimate the implicit decision...

This national-scale, watershed-level analysis provides an empirical assessment of land use impacts on water quality and aquatic ecosystems in the United States. Results suggest that the level of conventional water pollution in a watershed is significantly affected by the amount of land allocated...

The choice of policy mechanisms for encouraging environmentally beneficial land-use change should depend on the relative levels of private (or internal) net benefits, and public (or external) net benefits. A map of recommended policy mechanisms is developed, depending on the relative levels of...

The paper concerns the cost of federal policies to protect endangered species in a legal system that gives primary authority over land use decisions to state and local governments. A conceptual model captures the essential features of federal interventions to conserve habitat for listed species,...

Policy reforms in the Columbia Basin spurred water rights reallocation for ecological recovery. Transaction costs have caused implementation to lag. This paper examines transaction costs and institutional performance in environmental water allocation. It evaluates spatial and temporal...

This study examines the effect of waste and recycling policy on scrap prices and the importance of scrap price feedbacks as a determinant of policy costs. Price effects and direct and indirect channels of waste reduction are decomposed for deposit/refund, advance disposal fee, and recycling...

This study uses a structural econometric model to evaluate the impacts of support from a European Union agri-environmental program designed to reduce nutrient pollution from agricultural land. Drawing on a representative sample of individual grain farms, we first quantify the effects of...

In this paper we do an ex post evaluation of the French tax on air pollution. The revenues of this tax were redistributed to polluters in the form of subsidies to abatement technologies, and the policy is a typical example of an earmarked tax. We use a two-stage estimation procedure on an...

We consider a policy environment in which an entire industry is faced with possible imposition of an emissions tax if environmental goals are not met voluntarily. We develop a multiple-firm model of pollution abatement in this context. Using the concept of a self-enforcing equilibrium, we...