Payments to communities from landfill developers in exchange for permission to construct, expand, or operate a landfill have become popular. The value of this host compensation varies widely, yet the factors that influence it are unexplored. We construct a unique data set of host fees paid by...

The 1996 Farm Bill (FAIR) dramatically changed agricultural policy for producers of many commodities. A series of 7 annual decoupled payments replaced the deficiency-payment program. Option-pricing techniques are used to determine whether program benefits to corn producers are smaller or larger...

Conventional measures of gross domestic product (GDP) fail to account for the effect of economic activity on the environment. Integrated environmental-economic (or 'green') GDP is calculated using a data-envelopment-analysis (DEA) framework. For this purpose a dynamic cross-country technology is...

Higher union density (the percentage of employees in an area who belong to unions) is known to raise the wages of union members. We find that in the supermarket industry, higher density locally also leads to higher wages for non-union members. Despite this, workers who are not in unions lose...

The paper provides a methodology that is feasibly implemented for integrated environmental-economic (or 'green') GDP accounting and productivity measurement. The shadow prices for environmental inputs, which enable us to calculate green GDP and to design a pollution tax scheme and tradable...

When economic actors are also allowed to become politically active, perhaps to influence a government price policy, they face decision problems with essentially simultaneous political and economic features. If, in addition, two groups struggle to pull the administered price level in opposite...

We develop a spatial model to examine policies aimed at reducing ambient concentrations of fine particulates (PM2.5), with emissions from many sources that affect many population centers. Two alternative specifications of the relationship between PM2.5 concentration and health impacts from...