ABSTRACT. Economic models typically assume that individual wants are determined by forces exogenous to the economic system. Social psychology and consumer research, in contrast, support the view that the perceived benefits of goods and services are strongly affected by endogenously determined...

This paper examines the relationship between transaction costs and the value of full title to mining claims staked under the 1872 Mining Law. Miners can either acquire full title to their claims (known as a mineral patent) or mine unpatented claims. The costs of enforcing claim rights is lower...

Competing explanations of the resource curse are tested using panel data. The data support the existence of a mineral resource curse for developing countries with weak institutions, consistent with the hypothesis that owners of mineral resources use weak institutions and openness to trade to...

Taking advantage of randomly assigned federal mineral rights, this paper establishes the discount that mineral developers place on oil and gas leases with divided ownership. Results of 53 bimonthly federal oil and gas lease auctions in Wyoming between February 1998 and October 2006 are examined....

Impacts of Fish and Wildlife Service wetland easements on agricultural land values in North Dakota were estimated by regressing sale prices on physical and institutional characteristics of sold parcels. While easements on temporary wetlands did not influence prices, each additional acre of...

This paper examines how the oil and soning that these effects should be similar gas industry responds to changes in environmental to those of production and property taxes. and land use regulations pertaining to drilling by Like Stollery, however, they do not conexamining differences in...

L eakage from forest carbon seques- tion has been widely acclaimed as an optration— the amount of a program’s direct carbon tion for mitigating greenhouse gas emisbenefits undermined by carbon releases else- sions (GHGE). Land use change and where—depends critically on demanders’ability...

The instrument of extractive reserves has been advertised as a novel approach to reconciling biodiversity conservation and economic development. The empirical literature analyzing extractive reserves, however, delivers an ambiguous assessment of its success. This paper asks whether extractive...

This paper explores whether natural resource abundance leads to slower growth rates. We distinguish between natural resource dependence (RD) and natural resource endowment (RE). We estimate two models, using World Bank data on national capital stocks. In a one-equation model we show that RD has...

Urbanization often creates waterrelated externalities such as increased flooding and decreased groundwater recharge. Decreased recharge can lead to the diminution of potentially valuable groundwater. Groundwater’s ability to buffer water-supply shocks may be a substantial component of the...