Most economic studies of pollution control analyze policies that are optimal for a given set of underlying parameters. Less understood is how such policies perform when the underlying parameters change and policies are not adjusted in response, or what the benefits of adjustment are. We...

The recent 9-billion-gallon increase in corn-based ethanol production, which resulted from a combination of rising gasoline prices and a suite of Federal bioenergy policies, provides evidence of how farmers altered their land-use decisions in response to increased demand for corn. As some...

In recent years, direct payments—a type of farm commodity program payment—have made up a large share of Federal agriculture assistance that could be withheld from farmers who fail to comply with highly erodible land conservation (conservation compliance and sodbuster) or wetland conservation...

A deeper understanding of barriers to participation in conservation programs, including farmer transaction costs, may improve program design and implementation as well as producer outreach, and thus improve water quality. Data on perceived barriers and transaction costs from the 2012 USDA...

Conversion of native sod (grassland) to cropland in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is threatening important breeding habitats for migratory birds. About 50 percent of North American ducks are produced in the grasslands of the PPR, even though this habitat accounts for only ten percent of duck...

Payment programs that incentivize conservation practices on farms produce additional environmental gains only if farmers receiving payments adopt practices that they would not have adopted without the payment. For some conservation practices, the “additionality” of payments may be low if...

Conservation payments lead to improvement in environmental quality only if farmers and ranchers who receive them adopt conservation practices that would not have been adopted without the payment. When a voluntary payment causes a change in practice(s) that lead(s) to improved environmental...

We develop a watershed-based model of green payments to examine how payments applied to different environmental performance measures compare on the basis of economic efficiency, equity, and environmental outcomes. We also explore how targeting in the specification of water quality goals (e.g.,...

Agricultural nonpoint pollution is inherently stochastic (e.g., due to weather). In theory, this randomness has implications for the choice and design of policy instruments. However, very few empirical studies have modeled natural variability. This paper investigates the importance of stochastic...