In this study we conduct an impact evaluation of a complex rural development project in Central America with multiple treatments taking place simultaneously, purposive program placement and project participant freedom to opt in to project interventions. For this purpose we use propensity score...

The debate over sustainable intensification has hinged on private incentives to abate land degradation. Largely missing is the role of social capital in both creating incentives and removing barriers to soil conservation. Yet soil conservation embodies the externality problem that bedevils so...

The control of pests by their natural enemies represents an important ecosystem service that maintains the stability of agroecosystems and has the potential to mitigate pest control costs both to private producers and to society. Extending the “"economic threshold”" concept, this paper...

Payment-for-Ecosystem-Services (PES) programs are gaining appeal as flexible approaches to inducing the voluntary provision of ecosystem services (ES). Farmers, who manage agricultural ecosystems, provide important nonmarket ecosystem services to the public by their choice of production inputs...

This paper compares environmental and profitability outcomes for a centralized biorefinery for cellulosic ethanol that does all processing versus a biorefinery linked to a decentralized array of local depots that pretreat biomass into concentrated briquettes. The analysis uses a spatial...

In recent decades, public research into agricultural technology development has shifted is primary focus from farm profitability to environmental stewardship. While the orientation of technologies coming from the public sector has changed, the factors motivating adoption by farm businesses...