International donors invest billions of dollars to conserve ecosystems in low-income nations. The most common investments aim to encourage commercial activities, such as ecotourism, that indirectly generate ecosystem protection as a joint product. We demonstrate that paying for ecosystem...

Land value taxation has numerous potential advantages compared to conventional property taxes on capital and land. The models that establish these advantages, however, are grounded in the unlikely assumption that land values are assessed without error. This paper demonstrates that levying taxes...

Emissions trading takes place from two alternative baselines: 1) emission reduction credits (ERCs) in which the baseline is existing regulations which are often activity-based; or 2) cap-and-trade which specifies the total allowable emissions. This paper examines the effects of these two tradable...

This paper reevaluates federal allocation decisions to protect 241 endangered vertebrates between 1993 - 1996. We control for the time invariant species characteristics to address species heterogeneity bias. The results suggest that yearly variation in variables like endangerment rankings and...

Some economists have advocated the use of measures of genetic dissimilarity to guide species preservation priorities. It is argued here that such policies are: 1) possible for only a very small number of species for which data are available; 2)impractical as a general guide to biodiversity...

The degree to which selectivity in fisheries is malleable to changes in incentive structures is critical for policy design. We examine data for a multispecies trawl fishery before and after a transition from management under common-pool quotas to a fishery cooperative and note a substantial...

Under the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, forests planted on or after January 1, 1990, earn carbon credits. These credits have to be repaid when the forest is harvested. This paper analyses the effects of this scheme on the value of bareland on which radiata pine is to be planted. A real...

What happens when an environmental NGO (ENGO) becomes involved in fisheries management, and its involvement is recognized by the managing authorities? The answer depends on the preferences and the measures of the ENGO. We use a bioeconomic objective function where fishers and regulator have...

Individual transferable quotas (ITQs) induce changes along both the extensive margin—via consolidation of quota among fewer vessels—and the intensive margin, as harvesters adjust their behavior to ITQ incentives. We use ITQ introduction in the Bering Sea crab fishery to decompose the sources...

Available estimates of the land use changes and greenhouse gas emissions of biofuels differ significantly across economic models. This paper focuses on the impacts of price-induced yield assumptions on U.S. corn ethanol results. These assumptions have dramatic impacts within the FAPRI modeling...