Every government that controls an exhaustible resource must decide whether to exploit it or to conserve and thereby let the subsequent government decide whether to exploit or conserve. This paper develops a model of this situation and shows when a small probability that some future government...

This paper is concerned with agri-environmental policy in Germany and focuses in particular on soil and water conservation. At first it discusses to what extent agriculture contributes to erosion and the pollution of surface waters and groundwater with nutrients and pesticides. Whereas erosion...