This paper integrates a spatial fire-behavior model and a stochastic dynamic-optimization model to determine the optimal spatial pattern of fuel management and timber harvest. Each year’s fire season causes the loss of forest values and lives in the western United States. We use a multi-plot...

Private agents make large contributions to networks of conserved land, but little is known about how private agents' decisions might be altered by government actions. This paper explores the impact of public conservation and public policy on the quantity and configuration of private land...

Forest managers in developing countries enforce extraction restrictions to limit forest degradation. In response, villagers may displace some of their extraction to other forests, which generates “leakage†of degradation. Managers also implement poverty alleviation projects to...

This paper relates the key findings of the optimal economic enforcement literature to practical issues of enforcing and managing forest and wildlife access restrictions in developing countries. Our experiences, particularly in Tanzania and southern India, detail the major pragmatic issues facing...

Managed forest ecosystems like shade coffee supply valuable ecological services. Yet little is known about the drivers and characteristics of clearing in such systems. We present a spatial econometric analysis of land cover in a shade coffee region in southern Mexico. We find that plots close to...

Although Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) provide an increasingly popular policy tool for protecting marine stocks and biodiversity, they pose high costs for small-scale fisherfolk who have few alternative livelihood options in poor countries. MPAs often address this burden on local households by...

Typically both local villagers (“insiders”) and non-locals (“outsiders”) extract products from protected forests even though the activities are illegal. Our paper suggests that, depending on the relative ecological damage caused by each group, budget-constrained forest managers may be...

This article examines how the spatial configuration of forest ownership influences risk-mitigating behavior of public and private forestland owners over time. We use a game theoretic framework to examine how the public landowner’s investment in fuel management influences, and is influenced by,...