Research related to the Endangered Species Act tends to take the presence of that policy as given and focus on issues of implementation and effects. This paper seeks to reconsider U.S. conservation policy entirely. The ESA does not protect species or ecosystems that are not endangered, and...

The dominant paradigm of conservation-reserve planning in economics is to optimize the provision of physical conservation benefits (measured in units like species protected) given a budget constraint. Large-scale biology-based priority setting implies that the value we place on biodiversity and...

We present a theory of vehicle choice where utility depends on the vehicle choices made by other consumers. We use parameters from current transportation and public safety data to show that changes in motor vehicle policy may have unexpectedly large or non-existent effects on safety, fleet mix,...

Paper removed at the request of the authors.

It is difficult for public agencies to make optimal reserve-site selections without knowing how new public reserves might influence the configuration of private conservation. Private land trusts protect much land in the USA, but little is known about how private groups respond to conservation...

Becker (1983) hypothesized that interest groups compete strategically for influence with policy makers; that important model has been assumed or ignored rather than tested. This paper builds theoretical and econometric frameworks that can test hypotheses about strategic behavior when data on...

Many of the biggest environmental policies are federal: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and so forth. Yet those federal laws leave important niches to be filled by state authorities; there are areas of environmental policy in which state governments can and should take the lead. Some...