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...

Conserving the watershed can help to preserve the groundwater supplies by avoiding loss of recharge. Preventing overuse of available water through pricing reforms can also substantially increase benefits from groundwater stock. Since efficiency prices are generally higher than the inefficient,...

Several studies have documented that intertemporal water allocation in Hawaii (as elsewhere) is inefficient (see e.g., Moncur et. al., 1998). The result is widely expected to be early depletion of groundwater resources and the resulting need for using expensive and exotic technologies such as...

Invasive species change ecosystems and the economic services such ecosystems provide. Optimal policy will minimize the expected damages and costs of prevention and control. We seek to explain policy outcomes as a function of biological and economic factors, using the case of Hawaii to...

Optimal recycling of minerals can be thought of as an integral part of the theory of the mine. In this paper, we consider the role that wastewater recycling plays in the optimal extraction of groundwater, a renewable resource. We develop a two-sector dynamic optimization model to solve for the...

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...

Estimates of direct and indirect material and energy usage for New York State are derived from existing input-output and natural resource and energy databases. The work provides both a generally applicable methodology and an empirical example for estimating energy and material flow impacts at...

Legislation passed in 2002 enables managed harvesting and grazing of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land, including harvesting of biomass. The objective of the research is to determine the cost to acquire, harvest, store, and deliver a steady flow of biomass from CRP grasslands to a biorefinery.