Travel cost models are routinely used to assess the impact of policy changes on consumer’ s surplus. In this paper we show that when the policy change leads to a partial closure of the resource, then the standard use of consumer’ s surplus per trip can be inappropriate depending upon the...

Despite two decades of debate, there remains little consensus about what sustainability is, and how it should be achieved. Economists primarily portray sustainability as a macro-level concern, but there has been less attention on the implications of this social objective for policies related to...

We explore the distributional consequences of various fee schemes and other policy programs to reduce overfishing in the gulf of Mexico recreational fishery. The econometric model allows the marginal utility of income to vary across three income groups. We find that flat fees have a strong...

Environmental economists have traditionally addressed the issue of choice under uncertainty by applying the expected utility hypothesis. When policymakers face a panel of experts with widely divergent beliefs, the problem may more accurately be described as a case of choice under pure...

We use propensity score matching to estimate additionality from enrollment in federal costshare programs for six practices. We analyze farmer adoption decisions based on farmer survey data in Ohio. We develop a new methodological approach to decompose the average treatment effect on the treated...

Little is known about land cover change in agroforestry systems, which often supply valuable ecological services. We use a spatial regression model to analyze clearing in El Salvador’s shade coffee–growing regions during the 1990s. Our findings buttress previous research suggesting the...

Virtually all U.S. states have now created voluntary cleanup programs (VCPs), offering liability relief and other incentives for responsible parties to remediate contaminated sites. We use a multinomial probit model to analyze participation in Oregon’s two VCPs. In contrast to previous VCP...