Examining the value of carbon sequestration in a dynamic model, the authors demonstrate that unless the sequestration is permanent, it is only a fraction of the value of emission abatement. The magnitude of the fraction increases in the duration of sequestration, the natural decay rate of...

Because of payoff uncertainties combined with risk aversion and/or real options, farmers may demand a premium in order to adopt conservation tillage practices, over and above the compensation for the expected profit losses (if any). We propose a method of directly estimating the financial...

We investigate the environmental impacts of several forms of policies that offer farmers subsides in return for adoption of conservation tillage. The policies differ on whether the tillage practice or one of the environmental benefits is targeted. We develop an environmental Lorenz curve that...

A new approach is under way for the research agenda of environmental valuation. Rather than treating stated preference (SP) and revealed preference (RP) as competing valuation techniques, analysts have started to view them as complementary, where the strengths of each approach can be used to...

In this paper, we examine command-and-control (CAC) policies and market-based instruments (MBI) in the context of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The CRP, an MBI in the form of subsidies, is by far the largest agro-environmental policy implemented to date. We compare the environmental...

Given the empirically observed sensitivity of welfare estimates to functional form, it is natural to consider whether nonparametric methods such as those developed by Varian might be of value in nonmarket welfare analysis. This study presents simple methods for constructing nonparametric bounds...

This study investigates the implications of treating different environmental benefits as the primary target of policy design. We focus on two scenarios, estimating for both of them in-stream sediment, nutrient loadings, and carbon sequestration. In the first, we assess the impact of a program...

The paper presents two simple models of dynamic consumer behavior, both taking into consideration the implications for welfare measurement when agents can delay transactions while obtaining additional information. One model studies the effect when a purchased good is non-perishable and can be...

The United States has invested large sums of resources in multiple conservation programs for agriculture over the past century. In this paper we focus on the impacts of program interactions. Specifically, using an integrated economic and bio-physical modeling framework, we consider the impacts...

In this paper, we examine the design of permit trading programs when the objective is to minimize the cost of achieving an ex ante pollution target, that is, one that is defined in expectation rather than an ex post deterministic value. We consider two potential sources of uncertainty, the...