U.S. Conservation Policy Reconsidered

Research related to the Endangered Species Act tends to take the presence of that policy as given and focus on issues of implementation and effects. This paper seeks to reconsider U.S. conservation policy entirely. The ESA does not protect species or ecosystems that are not endangered, and formally requires that conservation efforts be spread evenly across endangered species to prevent their extinctions. However, the focus of conservation science has evolved in recent years towards ecosystems and away from species. This paper characterizes the composition of optimal conservation spending when species are valued for their contributions to ecosystem services and not always for their own existence. The ESA clearly fails to provide ecosystem services when the species that provide them happen to be widespread enough not to be endangered. I show that the Noahs Ark design of the ESA is also unlikely to yield optimal conservation levels even of endangered species, and can push excess total social resources away from conservation and towards consumer goods. I show that private conservation can help to remediate inefficient distribution of government activity among species if the scale of government programs is modest enough to leave room for private initiatives to remedy accidental government misallocations. Finally, I suggest an alternative pair of policies that protect ecosystem services and match private expenditures on conservation of charismatic species.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Optimal Contract Length for Voluntary Land Conservation Programs

In many parts of the world, deteriorating environmental conditions have led policy makers to develop policies and programs aimed at promoting conservation practices on lands devoted to agriculture. Such programs have been studied by environmental economists, but little research has been done on the usefulness of strategically varying the conservation contract's length. This paper uses theory and simulation to investigate the optimal contract length of land conservation programs when a policy maker tries to maximize the present discounted value of the stream of environmental benefits from the program. We find that contract length should vary with characteristics of the ecological processes that yield benefits from land retirement. Optimal contracts are longer when the environmental benefits in question things like woodland biodiversity take time to develop. However, it is not typically optimal to have the indefinitelylived contracts favored by some conservation groups, or even to offer contracts as long as the maturation period for the environmental services in question. In general, the optimal contract length depends on the trade off between an ecological effect (increasing the environmental benefits from one farmer) and an enrollment effect (increasing the number of farmers enrolled). Our findings also suggest that non-ecological regional characteristics (such as turnover rate and average farm income) could play an important role in the design of conservation programs.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Defensive purchasing and motor-vehicle policy effectiveness

We present a theory of vehicle choice where utility depends on the vehicle choices made by other consumers. We use parameters from current transportation and public safety data to show that changes in motor vehicle policy may have unexpectedly large or non-existent effects on safety, fleet mix, and the environment.Public Economics,

Water quality warnings and recreational fishing: effects over time and across space

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Endangered species protection and National Forest timber sales : three essays in economics

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 1996.Includes bibliographical references.by Amy Whritenour Ando.Ph.D

Do Interest Groups Compete?

This paper conducts a test of the hypothesis that interest groups compete strategically for influence with a policy-making agency. It adapts econometric methodology from the empirical industrial organization literature that was designed to work with discrete game-theoretic models, and uses data on whether or not supporting and opposing interest groups submitted comments to the Fish and Wildlife Service about each of 173 proposals to add new species to the endangered species list. The results imply that groups do respond to variations in the expected costs and benefits of a listing when deciding whether to pressure the agency. There is no support, however, for the hypothesis that the levels of pressure exerted by the groups emerge from the Nash equilibrium of games with simultaneous moves and perfect information