On-Farm Costos of Reducing environmental degradation under risk

Farmers respond to environmental regulations by adjusting production practices so as to comply while minimizing their loss in expected income. Ultimately the cost of agro environmental regulation is determined by farm level adjust¬ments. Our farm level simulation framework assesses economic and environmental impacts of hypothetical pesticide restrictions in the context of continuing soil conservation efforts.

Structural Vector Error Correction Modeling of Integrated Sportfishery Data

We demonstrate how to specify and estimate a time series model that can isolate the effects of changes in fishery policy and forecast the outcome of policy changes in the context of changing climate and economic factors. The approach is illustrated with data from the headboat fishery for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. The initial data analysis finds that effort and harvest are cointegrated series and that effort appears to respond somewhat to past changes in harvest. This suggested a structural vector error correction model specification. Model estimation results indicate that seasonal closures directly influence both harvest and effort, whereas bag and minimum size limits only affect harvest directly. Also, climate activity has a moderate influence on this fishery, mainly via changes in effort. Model forecasts are evaluated relative to a more naïve specification using out-of-sample data and the use of the model for policy analysis is demonstrated.Climate, Gulf of Mexico, red snapper, sportfishing demand, structural vector error correction, time series, Public Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty, Q22 Q26 Q28 C32,

Optimal Crop-Insurance Strategies under Climate Variability: Contrasting Insurer and Farmer Interests

This study analyzes the potential synergies and conflicts of interest between farmers and insurers in the selection of an optimal crop insurance contract. Special attention is given to how climate information influences this decision-making process. To do so, we consider a representative 40 hectares, rainfed, cotton-peanut farm located in Jackson County in Florida. Our results show that year-to-year ENSO-based climate variability affects farmers income and insurers gains according to crop insurance contracts. Additionally, introduction of ENSO-based climate forecasts presents a significant impact on the selection of a particular contract. We conclude that insurers and farmers can bridge their divergent interests by improving their understanding of the effect of climate conditions on the development of sustainable business plans.Environmental Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

The Parts of My Body

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Local Orthogonal Rectification: A New Tool for Geometric Phase Space Analysis

Local orthogonal rectification (LOR) provides a natural and useful geometric frame for analyzing dynamics relative to manifolds embedded in flows. LOR can be applied to any embedded base manifold in a system of ODEs of arbitrary dimension to establish a corresponding system of LOR equations for analyzing dynamics within the LOR frame. The LOR equations encode geometric properties of the underlying flow and remain valid, in general, beyond a local neighborhood of the embedded manifold. Additionally, we illustrate the utility of LOR by showing a wide range of application domains. In the plane, we use the LOR approach to derive a novel definition for rivers, long-recognized but poorly understood trajectories that locally attract other orbits yet need not be related to invariant manifolds or other familiar phase space structures, and to identify rivers within several example systems. In higher dimensions, we apply LOR to identify periodic orbits and study the transient dynamics nearby. In the LOR method, %in $\R^n$ for any $n$, the standard approach of finding periodic orbits by solving for fixed points of a Poincar\'{e} return map is replaced by the solution of a boundary value problem with fixed endpoints, and the computation provides information about the stability of the identified orbit. We detail the general method and derive theory to show that once a periodic orbit has been identified with LOR, the LOR coordinate system allows us to characterize the stability of the periodic orbit, to continue the orbit with respect to system parameters, to identify invariant manifolds attendant to the periodic orbit, and to compute the asymptotic phase associated with points in a neighborhood of the periodic orbit in a novel way. Finally, we generalize the definition of rivers beyond planar systems, and demonstrate a fundamental connection between canard solutions in two-timescale systems and generalized rivers. We will again use a blow-up transformation on the LOR equations, which provides a useful decomposition for studying trajectories' behavior relative to the embedded base curve

ENSO Forecast Value, Variable Climate and Stochastic Prices

We evaluate ENSO forecasts when prices are variable and ENSO is a portion of overall climatic variability. Forecast responses include crop mix, cultivar,fertilization, and planting date. Price changes reduce forecast value by excluding responses. Predictable income variability (ENSO-related), as a share of the total, evaluates forecast skill.Environmental Economics and Policy,

An Experimental Test of the Crayfish (Orconectes immunis) as a Control Mechanism for Submerged Aquatic Macrophytes

The ability of the crayfish Orconectes immunis to graze submerged aquatic macrophytes was evaluated experimentally. Crayfish at densities greater than 140-150 g/m2 significantly decreased macrophyte biomass in all experiments. The rate of crayfish grazing in cages where significant decreases in macrophyte biomass occurred averaged 0.012 g of macrophytes consumed/crayfish/m2/day