This article develops a dynamic micro-economic land use model to identify the cost-effective allocation of cropland for traditional row crops and perennial grasses and the mix of cellulosic feedstocks needed to meet pre-determined biofuel targets over the 2007-2022 period. Yields of perennial...

This paper examines the extensive and intensive margin changes in land use in the U.S. likely to be induced by biofuel policies and the implications of these policies for GHG emissions over the 2007-2022 period. The policies considered here include the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) by itself as...

Biofuels have been promoted to achieve energy security and as a solution to mitigating climate change. This research presents a framework to examine the extent to which biofuel mandates and subsidies reduce gasoline consumption and their implications for the food and fuel prices. A dynamic,...

We investigate effects of corn-based ethanol plants on local land uses using county-level panel data for Iowa for 1997 through 2009 and an Arellano-Bond difference-generalized method-of-moments estimator. Our results show that ethanol plants have statistically significant effects on the...

We develop a real option model of the irreversible native grassland conversion decision. Upon plowing, native grassland can be followed by either a permanent cropping system or a system in which land is put under cropping (respectively, grazing) whenever crop prices are high (respectively, low)....

The U.S. Federal Government implements environmental, biofuels and crop insurance programs that influence land use. They are not well-integrated in that cost savings from crop insurance subsidies are not acknowledged when screening land for retirement or when calculating the cost of land...

There have long been concerns that federal crop insurance subsidies may significantly impact land use decisions. It is well known that classical insurance market information asymmetry problems can lead to a social excess of risky land entering crop production. Our conceptual model shows that the...

An integrated watershed management framework that combines detailed spatial biophysical attributes of land with a hydrologic model and an economic model is developed to study the cost-effective enrollment of land in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP). Compared with previous...