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...

In the U.S., urban sprawl and the rise in obesity rates have been two powerful trends during the latter half of the 20th century. Previous empirical work has found that obesity rates are influenced by labor market outcomes that are fundamentally shaped by the spatial pattern of developed land....

We analyze an urban spatial model to examine the possible link between urban land use and obesity. Households maximize utility defined over housing, weight, and food subject to a fixed time budget allocated to commuting, calorie expenditure, and work. Our model explains the observed...

The effects on wage growth of management practices applied on public lands in the Northern Forest region of the United States are quantified. A central objective is to determine if the management of public lands for preservationist uses results in lower average wages. This is a frequent claim...

Besides climate change mitigation, policies encouraging the conversion of agricultural land to forest may generate additional environmental benefits. We estimate the reductions in agricultural externalities (soil erosion, nitrogen, and atrazine pollution) from an afforestation program in...

We investigate the influence of future land development on current agricultural land values. From a theoretical model of land markets, we derive a reduced-form expression for agricultural land values in terms of observable variables. This result dictates the specification of our econometric...

Land-use changes involve important economic and environmental effects with implications for international trade, global climate change, wildlife, and other policy issues. We use an econometric model to identify factors driving land-use change in the United States between 1982 and 1997. We...

This paper develops a theoretical model to analyze the spatial targeting of incentives for the restoration of forested landscapes when wildlife habitat can be enhanced by reducing fragmentation. The key theoretical result is that the marginal net benefits of increasing forest are convex,...

The use of public lands and waterways is often subject to environmental regulations designed to limit the depletion of resource stocks. Such regulations may influence expectations of quality, destination choice, and consumer surplus. This paper examines the effects of environmental regulations...

We empirically investigate the effects of the Northwest Forest Plan on two widely-used economic indicators: employment growth and net migration. We find weak evidence that that setting aside 10 million acres of productive forest land for biodiversity protection had a large, but short-lived...