Many of the biggest environmental policies are federal: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and so forth. Yet those federal laws leave important niches to be filled by state authorities; there are areas of environmental policy in which state governments can and should take the lead. Some...

Government trustees conduct natural resource damage assessments (NRDAs) to hold firms liable for damages caused by their pollution. We analyze a model in which a trustee chooses NRDA accuracy and a firm chooses precaution in response, where increased NRDA accuracy increases expense but decreases...

This paper uses duration analysis to evaluate the ability of interest groups to influence the timing of decisions to add species to the endangered species list by exerting pressure on the Fish and Wildlife Service. Using data from 1990 to 1994, it finds that public opposition and support can...

We present a theory of vehicle choice where utility depends on the vehicle choices made by other consumers. We use parameters from current transportation and public safety data to show that changes in motor vehicle policy may have unexpectedly large or non-existent effects on safety, fleet mix,...

The dominant paradigm of conservation-reserve planning in economics is to optimize the provision of physical conservation benefits (measured in units like species protected) given a budget constraint. Large-scale biology-based priority setting implies that the value we place on biodiversity and...

In many parts of the world, deteriorating environmental conditions have led policy makers to develop policies and programs aimed at promoting conservation practices on lands devoted to agriculture. Such programs have been studied by environmental economists, but little research has been done on...

Research related to the Endangered Species Act tends to take the presence of that policy as given and focus on issues of implementation and effects. This paper seeks to reconsider U.S. conservation policy entirely. The ESA does not protect species or ecosystems that are not endangered, and...