Many invaded ecosystems appear subject to regime shifts—abrupt changes from one state to another after crossing a threshold or tipping point. The stability landscapes of such multi-stable systems, including their associated thresholds, have been shown to be endogenously determined within a...

We consider an ecosystem management problem where managers can use habitat creation and predator removal to conserve an endangered species. Predator removal may become particularly important in the face of habitat loss, and ecosystem management strategies that ignore the influence of habitat are...

We consider the design of ambient taxes forrisk-neutral and risk-averse polluters whenpolluters and the regulatory agency haveasymmetric information about environmentalrelationships and probabilities associatedwith random events. Unlike prior work, we showthat under these conditions, optimal...

Research on nonpoint pollution control instruments has focused primarily on incentives applied either to production inputs that affect nonpoint pollution, or to ambient pollution concentrations. Both approaches may in theory yield an efficient solution. However, input-based incentives will...

Most bioeconomic models of efficient renewable resource management are constructed for a single harvesting ground. A bioeconomic model is developed in this paper to study the optimal management of renewable resources that are found in spatially distinct harvesting grounds. The model is applied...

Expansion of human populations and activities has caused increased conflicts between wildlife and humans. As a result, the distinction between resource and pest species has become blurry. We propose an economically-based classification of species based on a multi-use bioeconomic model. The...

In recent years, direct payments — a type of farm commodity program payment — have made up a large share of Federal agriculture assistance that could be withheld from farmers who fail to comply with highly erodible land conservation (conservation compliance and sodbuster) or wetland...

Conservation payments lead to improvement in environmental quality only if farmers and ranchers who receive them adopt conservation practices that would not have been adopted without the payment. When a voluntary payment causes a change in practice(s) that lead(s) to improved environmental...