In a time of changing demographics, an increasing demand for renewable energy sources and a growing concern for the environment, policy makers in Iowa are faced with the challenge of identifying strategies for economic development that balances the needs of the changing population with economic...

In addition to improving the allocative efficiency of water use, water markets may reduce irrigation-related water quality problems. This potential benefit is examined with a nonlinear programming model developed to simulate agricultural decision-making in a drainage problem area in California's...

Many important hypotheses in applied economics depend upon the magnitude of estimated elasticities or flexibilities. However, their statistical properties are unknown for many popular models, making standard statistical inference impossible. This problem is addressed in the present paper which...

overview of water quality concerns in the midwest.

Recreation demand models are commonly employed tools of economists interested in valuing improvements in environmental amenities. Despite their importance, little comparative work has been undertaken to examine the ability of the models to accurately estimate welfare changes. A simulation study...

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The bias to welfare estimates from omitting substitute prices or qualities in travel cost models is examined. The presence of bias depends on whether single or multiple site changes are examined and the degree of correlation between the omitted and included prices. For a multiple site price or...

The study develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the allocation of conservation funds via selectively offering incentive payments to farmers for enrolling in one of two mutually exclusive agricultural conservation programs: retiring land from production or changing farming practices on...

In this paper, we study the social efficiency of private carbon markets that include trading in agricultural soil carbon sequestration when there are significant cobenefits (positive environmental externalities) associated with the practices that sequester carbon. Likewise, we investigate the...

The growth in federal conservation programs has created a need for policy modeling frameworks capable of measuring micro-level behavioral responses and macro-level landscape changes. This paper presents an empirical model that predicts crop choices, crop rotations, and conservation tillage...