This paper adopts a real options framework to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of four types of subsidies that aim to encourage a socially desirable land use under return uncertainties and costly reversibility of land use change. We first present a land conversion model to show how the subsidies...

Climate change is an important threat to human society. Agriculture is a source of greenhouse gases (GHG), but it also provides alternatives to confront climate change. The expansion of intensive agriculture around the world during recent decades has generated significant environmental damages...

Economists often rely on stylised models for analysis of environmental policies. This study demonstrates that abstracting from soil and topography can have profound effect on marginal abatement costs of nutrient loads. By extending earlier bioeconomic models to represent heterogeneous soils and...

In light of international discussions on a possible opt-in of the agricultural sector to the current European emission trading system for greenhouse gases, the objective of this article is to present a feasible implementation strategy for a market of emission permits in European agriculture and...

This article presents a modelling system for synthesising heterogeneous productivity and nutrient loading potentials inherent in agricultural cropland for policy use. Phosphorus abatement cost functions for cropland farmers in a southeastern Minnesota watershed are metamodelled using frontier...

The economic calculations carried out prior to the Plan for the Aquatic Environment III included a comparison of regulation systems aimed at reducing nitrogen leaching, analyses of measures for reducing phosphorus losses and estimation of administrative costs. The conclusions were that taxation...

La laguna costera del Mar Menor (SE Espana) viene sufriendo desde hace varias decadas un proceso de eutrofizacion y degradacion de la calidad de sus aguas, provocado en gran medida por los drenajes agricolas cargados de nutrientes que llegan desde su cuenca. Este trabajo evalua economicamente...

The economic calculations carried out prior to the Plan for the Aquatic Environment III included a comparison of regulation systems aimed at reducing nitrogen leaching, analyses of measures for reducing phosphorus losses and estimation of administrative costs. The conclusions were that taxation...

Genetic engineering (GE) in agriculture is a controversial topic in science and society at large. While some oppose genetically modified crops as proxy of an agricultural system they consider unsustainable and inequitable, the question remains whether GE can benefit the poor within the existing...

A comprehensive quantification of biodiversity in farming systems would require a very significant amount of work (and funds) even for a small area. Therefore, biodiversity indicators are needed to solve the problem of the measurement feasibility. Even though the issue of cost and effectiveness...