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...

Using data from 1995 and 1996, we estimate the cost of the Arizona Enhanced I/M Program and the emission reductions achieved. We begin by enumerating briefly the components of I/M costs and discuss their size and incidence. Then we describe the empirical information from Arizona and how we use...

This paper explores the influence of the behavior of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management on effective public policy toward the national forests. It shows that fluctuations in stumpage sales from such forests have been large. Furthermore, those fluctuations could well have a...

This paper uses Nevada data to conduct regression analyses of the relationship between sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) population sizes and potential causal factors. This is policy-relevant because of current petitions for listing this species under the Endangered Species Act. A key...

This paper assesses the potential for incomplete definitions of resource use to influence estimates of nonuser WTP, and whether uses underlying certain use values may escape measurement using standard mechanisms applied to distinguish resource users from nonusers. Empirical results are drawn...

Proposals for marginal cost water pricing have often been found to be politically infeasible because current users will have to pay a higher price even though future users will be better off. We show how efficiency pricing can be rendered Pareto-improving, and thus politically feasible, by...