A binary choice model was used to identify the attributes that influence irrigation district adoption of conservation rate structures. Using principles of rate design and irrigation district administration as a framework, measures of irrigation district rate structure objectives and physical and...

Rural decision makers use taxes and other resources to encourage growth. The session begins with an evaluation of rural employment patterns, then evaluates three economic development policy levers. Moderator: Daniel Rainey, Clemson University.Rural Employment Growth in the "New Economy:" A Test...

This paper describes the use of input-output modeling in estimating the economic impacts of the conservation reserve program (CRP) in North Dakota, discusses challenges faced in conducting the analysis, and examines lessons learned from the study. The study had two major phases: (1) a statewide...

This research seeks to produce more robust, less biased estimates from the two-constraint recreation demand model by applying globally flexible estimation techniques to travel cost data for California whale watching trips. While locally flexible functional forms do improve upon previously used...

For several decades, economists have been concerned with the problem of optimal resource use under uncertainty. In many studies, researchers assume that prices evolve according to an exogenous stochastic process and solve the corresponding dynamic optimization problem to yield an optimal...

The seasonal irrigation water demand under uncertainty, which lies at the core of this paper, is still very roughly known. We know, however, that irrigated agriculture accounts for a large proportion of water use, especially in many water-scarce areas. In this paper, we estimate the irrigation...

Wildfires in the United States result in total damages and costs that are likely to exceed billions of dollars annually. Land managers and policy makers propose higher rates of prescribed burning and other kinds of vegetation management to reduce amounts of wildfire and the risks of catastrophic...

The economic value of restoring Deckers Creek in Monongalia and Preston Counties of West Virginia was determined from mail, internet and personal interview surveys. Multi-attribute, choice experiments were conducted and nested logit models were estimated to derive the economic values of full...

Agriculture is by far the dominant user of water in the western United States and in nearly all arid regions of the planet. Despite this fact and despite a growing push to rely on price mechanisms for rationalizing water allocation, there are few econometric studies of agricultural water demand...

The validity of the Hotelling's rule, the fundamental theorem of nonrenewable resource economics, is limited by its partial equilibrium nature. One symptom of this limitation may be the disagreement between the empirical evidence, showing stable or declining resource prices, and the rule,...