Despite two decades of debate, there remains little consensus about what sustainability is, and how it should be achieved. Economists primarily portray sustainability as a macro-level concern, but there has been less attention on the implications of this social objective for policies related to...

Climate change is believed to be the root cause of the unprecedented mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak currently underway in the western United States. While climate change is undoubtedly a factor, changes in public forest management have resulted in more host trees in MPB habitat. We employ a...

This article considers optimal livestock management on sagebrush rangeland in the presence of invasive plants, wildfire, and reversible and irreversible ecological thresholds. We find that ranchers operating on healthy rangeland have sufficient private incentive to maintain rangeland health,...

This paper investigates the dynamic effects of rainfall shocks on agroecosystems productivity. The analysis estimates a panel data model of cereal production in southern Italy. It documents the adverse effects of a reduction in rainfall on the agroecosystem productivity both in the short run and...

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...

Payments for environmental services (PES) are popular despite little empirical evidence of their effectiveness. We estimate the impact of PES on forest cover in a region known for exemplary implementation of one of the best-known and longest-lived PES programs. Our evaluation design combines...

Stated preference surveys often provide ambiguous descriptions of ecological commodities, yielding welfare estimates that have unclear interpretations and cannot be linked to measurable outcomes. This paper proposes guidelines to promote ecological content validity in survey scenarios and...

In this paper, we develop a panel data negative binomial count model that corrects for endogenous stratification and truncation. We also incorporate a latent class structure into our panel specification, which assumes that the observations are drawn from a finite number of segments, where the...

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...