This paper examines spatial spillovers associated with the adoption of organic dairy farming. We hypothesize that neighboring farmers can help to reduce the uncertainty of organic conversion by lowering the fixed costs of learning about the organic system. A spatially explicit 10-year panel...

Habitat fragmentation is widely considered a primary threat to biodiversity. In this paper, we analyze incentive-based policies designed to reduce forest fragmentation in the coastal plain region of South Carolina. Our approach integrates an econometric model of land use with simulations that...

This study uses hedonic analysis to estimate the effects of a common aquatic invasive species—Eurasian watermilfoil (milfoil)—on property values across an extensive system of over 170 lakes in the northern forest region of Wisconsin. Since milfoil is inadvertently spread by recreational...

We quantify the effect that public conservation lands have on employment growth in the Northern Forest region of the United States. A model of simultaneous employment and net migration growth is estimated with data on non-metropolitan counties from 1990 to 1997. Exogenous variables include the...

Zoning is a widely used tool to manage residential growth. Estimating the effect of zoning on development, however, is difficult because zoning can be endogenous in models of land conversion. We compare three econometric methods that account for selection bias in a model of land conversion: a...

We estimate the impact of strict and multiple-use protected areas on forest disturbance in European Russia between 1985 and 2010. We construct a spatial panel dataset that includes five periods of change. We match protected areas to control observations and compare coefficients from fixed-versus...

Sunk costs play a significant role in shaping industry conduct and development outcomes associated "with the resource extraction sector. Their role is explored here by: (1) developing analytical models that show specifically how sunk costs influence investment behavior and outcomes; and (2)...