Agricultural biofuels require the use of scarce land, and this land has opportunity cost. We explore the objective function of a social planner who includes a land constraint in the optimization decision to minimize environmental cost. The results show that emissions should be measured on a per...

Kliauga, de Gorter, and Just (2008) and de Gorter, Drabik, and Just (2010) argue that the United States and the European Union establish the world ethanol and biodiesel prices, respectively. We test these theories using a cointegration analysis and the Vector Error Correction (VEC) model. Weekly...

This paper applies the insights of the carbon leakage literature to study the emissions consequences of biofuel policies. We develop a simple analytic framework to decompose the intended emissions impacts of biofuel policy from four sources of carbon leakage: domestic fuel markets, domestic land...

We show how leakage differs, depending on the biofuel policy and market conditions. Carbon leakage is shown to have two components: a market leakage effect and an emissions savings effect. We also distinguish domestic and international leakage. International leakage is always positive, but...

A general theory is developed to analyze the efficiency and income distribution effects of a biofuel consumer tax exemption and the interaction effects with a price contingent farm subsidy. Using U.S. policy as an example, ethanol prices rise above the gasoline price by the amount of the tax...