Contributions of U.S. Crop Subsidies to Biofuel and Related Markets

The U.S. crop subsidies provide incentives for farmers to expand feedstock production, which benefits the biofuel producers by lowering input costs. This study develops a general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of a reduction in the U.S. crop subsidy on biofuel industries and social welfare. The impacts of feedstock policies on the biofuel market are marginal. In contrast, the biofuel mandate has a larger impact and counteracts the effects of the crop subsidy reduction. The mandate increases the demand for feedstock and causes not only grain ethanol, but also cellulosic ethanol production to rise. The mandate exacerbates the distortion, and government spending increases significantly, leading to greater welfare loss.biofuel, environmental impacts, farm supports, welfare analysis, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Financial Economics, Land Economics/Use, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q18, Q27,

Promoting Lies through Regulation: Deterrence Impacts of Flexible versus Inflexible Policy

This paper investigates the signaling role of tax policy in promoting or hindering the ability of a monopolist to practice entry deterrence. We study contexts in which tax policy is Flexible and inflexible. We show that not only an informative equilibrium can be supported where information is conveyed to the entrant, but also an uninformative equilibrium where information is concealed. In addition, inflexible policies promote information transmission. Therefore, our results identify a potential benefit of inflexible policies, namely, hampering the practice of entry deterrence.Entry deterrence; Signaling; Emission fees; Perfect commitment

Ensuring the continued functionality of essential critical infrastructure industries by estimating the workforce impacts of COVID-19

This economic impact assessment was compiled on April 9, 2020 for the Colorado Food Supply Task Force by Jude Bayham and Alexandra E. Hill. Last updated April 9, 2020.Food Systems, Colorado State University

The Allocation of Time and Risk of Lyme: A Case of Ecosystem Service Income and Substitution Effects

Forests are often touted for their ecosystem services, including outdoor recreation. Historically forests were a source of danger and were avoided. Forests continue to be reservoirs for infectious diseases and their vectors�a disservice. We examine how this disservice undermines the potential recreational services by measuring the human response to environmental risk using exogenous variation in the risk of contracting Lyme Disease. We find evidence that individuals substitute away from spending time outdoors when there is greater risk of Lyme Disease infection. On average individuals spent 1.54 fewer minutes per day outdoors at the average, 72 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirmed cases of Lyme Disease. We estimate lost outdoor recreation of 9.41 h per year per person in an average county in the Northeastern United States and an aggregate welfare loss on the order $2.8 billion to$5.0 billion per year

Workforce changes and the food supply chain - understanding and mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on the agricultural workforce

Food Systems, Colorado State University

Geospatial framework to assess fireline effectiveness for large wildfires in the western USA, A

Includes bibliographical references (pages 16-19).Quantifying fireline effectiveness (FLE) is essential to evaluate the efficiency of large wildfire management strategies to foster institutional learning and improvement in fire management organizations. FLE performance metrics for incident-level evaluation have been developed and applied to a small set of wildfires, but there is a need to understand how widely they vary across incidents to progress towards targets or standards for performance evaluation. Recent efforts to archive spatially explicit fireline records from large wildfires facilitate the application of these metrics to a broad sample of wildfires in different environments. We evaluated fireline outcomes (burned over, held, not engaged) and analyzed incident-scale FLE for 33 large wildfires in the western USA from the 2017 and 2018 fire seasons. FLE performance metrics varied widely across wildfires and often aligned with factors that influence suppression strategy. We propose a performance evaluation framework based on both the held to engaged fireline ratio and the total fireline to perimeter ratio. These two metrics capture whether fireline was placed in locations with high probability of engaging with the wildfire and holding and the relative level of investment in containment compared to wildfire growth. We also identify future research directions to improve understanding of decision quality in a risk-based framework

Estimating the Impact of Statewide Policies to Reduce Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Real Time, Colorado, USA

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic necessitated rapid local public health response, but studies examining the impact of social distancing policies on SARS-CoV-2 transmission have struggled to capture regional-level dynamics. We developed a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered transmission model, parameterized to Colorado, USA‒specific data, to estimate the impact of coronavirus disease‒related policy measures on mobility and SARS-CoV-2 transmission in real time. During March‒June 2020, we estimated unknown parameter values and generated scenario-based projections of future clinical care needs. Early coronavirus disease policy measures, including a stay-at-home order, were accompanied by substantial decreases in mobility and reduced the effective reproductive number well below 1. When some restrictions were eased in late April, mobility increased to near baseline levels, but transmission remained low (effective reproductive number &lt;1) through early June. Over time, our model parameters were adjusted to more closely reflect reality in Colorado, leading to modest changes in estimates of intervention effects and more conservative long-term projections. &nbsp;</p

CHARACTERIZING INCENTIVES AN INVESTIGATION OF WILDFIRE RESPONSE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTRY POLICY

Policy makers face complex situations involving the analysis and weighting of multiple incentives that complicate the design of natural resource and environmental policy. The objective of this dissertation is to characterize policy makers' incentives, and to investigate the consequences of those incentives on environmental and economic outcomes in the context of wildfire management and environmental policy.Wildfire management occurs in a dynamic uncertain environment and requires the coordination of multiple management levels throughout the course of a fire season. Over the course of a wildfire, management teams allocate response resources between suppression of fire growth and protection of valuable assets to mitigate damage with minimal regard for cost. I develop a model of wildfire resource allocation to show that 1) wildfire managers face the incentive to protect residential structures at the expense of larger and more costly fires, and 2) response resources are transferred to fires with more threatened structures constraining the set of resources available to manage other fires in the region. I find empirical evidence to support the predictions of this model with theoretically consistent regression models of wildfire duration, size, and cost using data from U.S. wildfires that occurred between 2001 and 2010. These results imply that continued housing development of wildland prone to wildfire will 1) further distort management incentives, 2) lead to larger and more expensive fires, and 3) provide support for fees on rural homeowners.Governments facing political opposition to renewable energy subsidies may resort to augmenting the fixed cost of entry in order to induce environmental outcomes. In global markets, one government's entry policy creates either positive or negative pecuniary externalities in other regions. I develop a two-region model to investigate the behavior of rival governments setting strategic entry policy, and the subsequent impacts on welfare. The results indicate that competition between the rival governments prevents the social optimal level of entry and suggests a role for international environmental agreements

Resource Allocation Under Fire

Rising suppression cost and severity of wildfires in the US has prompted debate over federal wildfire management policy. The empirical economic literature on wildfire has sought to identify the factors that contribute to wildfire growth and cost without directly modeling the role of resource allocation over the course of the fire. Without a model of suppression resource allocation, it is difficult to understand how policy will impact wildfire outcomes. We fill this gap in the literature by estimating an econometric model of suppression resource allocation, wildfire expenditures, growth, and home damage using a dynamic panel dataset on over 500 wildfires in the Western U.S. Our econometric model is grounded in a theory of resource allocation that shows how individual fire managers communicate their need for resources to a regional command unit through the resource's shadow price. This model allows us to parse the complex incentives of wildfire managers, and disentangle direct from indirect impacts of threatened assets, environmental conditions, and resource scarcity on wildfire expenditure, growth, and damage. Among other results, we find that the use of aircraft increases daily wildfire expenditures by 35% while highly trained ground crews mitigate the daily damage to threatened homes

Contributions of U.S. Crop Subsidies to Biofuel and Related Markets

The U.S. crop subsidies provide incentives for farmers to expand feedstock production, which benefits the biofuel producers by lowering input costs. This study develops a general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of a reduction in the U.S. crop subsidy on biofuel industries and social welfare. The impacts of feedstock policies on the biofuel market are marginal. In contrast, the biofuel mandate has a larger impact and counteracts the effects of the crop subsidy reduction. The mandate increases the demand for feedstock and causes not only grain ethanol, but also cellulosic ethanol production to rise. The mandate exacerbates the distortion, and government spending increases significantly, leading to greater welfare loss