Many environmental policy issues involve conflicts between nature conservation and economic development. The economic rationale behind deciding among alternative options is predicated on some form of benefit-cost analysis (BCA). Key issues to date have been non-market valuation, the...

The on-farm conservation and management of native grasslands, especially those that are botanically diverse or support threatened species is now an important policy issue for State and Commonwealth Governments. Economics is important to achieving public policy goals because farms ore primarily...

Agri-environmental schemes are found in most European countries and now account for approximately 4 per cent part of EU expenditure on UK agriculture. A significant part of that expenditure is the cost of monitoring farmer compliance with input restrictions. This paper analyses the design of...

By design, tenders are used when costs are unknown. But if costs are unknown, how can we evaluate the tenders, when their evaluation involves measuring their cost-effectiveness? We identify three approaches: theoretical, empirical and experimental. We first use experimental data to compare the...

We extend Brander-Taylor's model of development on Easter Island by adding a resource subsistence requirement to people's preferences, and a conservation incentive in the form of a revenue-neutral, ad valorem tax on resource consumption. Adding subsistence improves plausibility; makes overshoot...

Buying environmental services from private landholders using auction mechanisms often involves repeated multi-unit procurement-type auctions. These can either be target-constrained or budget-constrained. Most of the theoretical literature has focused on the former, whereas government agencies...

If markets for nature conservation services are to ensure an efficient supply, property rights need to be well defined, readily defended and tradeable. However, some of these services have ill defined property rights that are costly, if at all possible to defend. This limits the incentives for...

Buying environmental services from private landholders using tendering mechanisms are usually subject to a budget constraint. Auction theory has mostly focused on target-constrained auctions and is not well developed for this type of auction. This paper examines the predictive capacity of a...

Government and non-government conservation agencies have long-term goals and objectives to provide environmental services, such as conserving the biodiversity of Australian native vegetation. In addition to national parks and reserves, private lands are often included in conservation programs to...