Private land trusts protect much land in the U.S., but private groups may fail to coordinate conservation decisions with other conservation agents. Furthermore, it is difficult for public agencies to make optimal reserve-site selections without knowing how these public reserves might influence...

Shade-grown coffee provides a livelihood to many farmers, protects biodiversity, and creates environmental services. Many shade-coffee farmers have abandoned production in recent years, however, in response to declines in international coffee prices. This paper builds a farmer decision model...

Managed forest ecosystems—agroforestry systems in which crops such as coffee and bananas are planted side-by-side with woody perennials—are being touted as a means of safeguarding forests along with the ecological services they provide. Yet we know little about the determinants of land cover...

More than three-quarters of Mexico’s coffee is grown on small plots shaded by the existing forest. Because they preserve forest cover, shade coffee farms provide vital ecological services including harboring biodiversity and preventing soil erosion. Unfortunately, tree cover in Mexico’s...

Few economic analyses examine land trusts, their decisions, and the land-trust “industry,” despite their growing importance. For example, statistics on the wide variation in the number of trusts in different regions of the United States raise questions about whether such variation makes...

This paper develops a framework for the valuation and management of tropical forests that reflects their ecological and economic characteristics. The analysis demonstrates the importance of modeling the feasible use patterns and the information structure in tropical forest management decisions....

This paper discusses the application of a spatial-intertemporal model for tropical forest management to Khao Yai National Park in Thailand. This type of model, especially the spatial components, finds different optimal land allocations than do traditional models at empirically relevant levels of...

Shade-grown coffee provides a livelihood to many farmers, protects biodiversity, and creates environmental services. Many shade-coffee farmers have abandoned production in recent years, however, in response to declines in international coffee prices. This paper builds a farmer decision model...

A large detailed data set is used to examine the relationship between housing prices and several environmental quality indicators representing air, water, and land influences. Our primary concern is the influence of waste site proximity on housing prices. The results indicate that individuals...