Negative Traffic Externalities and Infant Health: The Role of Income Heterogeneity and Residential Sorting

Environmental and Resource Economics - Road traffic is associated with a variety of negative externalities such as air pollution and environmental noise, with significant short- and long-run health...     

Potential Environmental Impacts of Increased Reliance on Corn-Based Bioenergy

This paper integrates economic and physical models to assess: a) how increases in agricultural commodity prices, driven by ethanol production and other factors, affect land use and cropping systems in the US Midwest, and b) how the changes in land use and cropping systems in turn affect environmental quality in the region. The empirical framework includes a set of econometric models that predict land conversion, crop choices, and crop rotations at the parcel level based on commodity prices, land quality, climate conditions, and other physical characteristics at the sites. The predictions are then combined with site-specific environmental production functions to determine the effect of rising commodity prices on nitrate runoff and leaching, soil water and wind erosion, and carbon sequestration. Results suggest that increasing commodity prices will result in widespread conversions of non-cropland to cropland. Fifty percent of the region’s pasture and range land will be converted to cropland with 6 corn. Rising commodity prices will also result in dramatic changes in crop mix and rotation systems in the Midwest. With6 corn. Rising commodity prices will also result in dramatic changes in crop mix and rotation systems in the Midwest. With 6 corn, the total acreage of corn will increase by 23% and 40% in the Corn Belt and Lake States, respectively; the acreage of continuous corn will increase considerably in both regions as well. These changes in land use and crop mix will have a large impact on agricultural pollution. Approaches to mitigating the environmental impacts are discussed.     

Predicting the Effect of Land-Use Policies on Wildlife Habitat Abundance

Land-use change is arguably the most pervasive socioeconomic force driving the change and degradation of ecological systems and wildlife habitat. This paper integrates an econometric model of land use with a species-habitat association matrix to assess the effects of land use policies on land use changes and the resulting impacts on habitat abundance for 763 terrestrial vertebrates in four western states of the United States (California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho). Results suggest that if the goal is to protect biodiversity through habitat conservation, directly acquiring land and setting it aside for habitat preservation (e.g., by purchasing development rights) is more effective than policies that attempt to change the relative returns from different land uses.
On peut dire que le changement d'affectation des terres constitue la force socioéconomique la plus répandue entraînant la modification et la dégradation des écosystèmes et des habitats fauniques. Dans le présent article, nous avons intégré un modèle économétrique d'affectation des terres et une matrice espèces-habitats pour évaluer l'impact des politiques d'affectation des terres sur les changements d'affectation des terres et leurs répercussions sur l'abondance des habitats pour 763 vertébrés terrestres dans quatre États de l'Ouest des États-Unis (Californie, Oregon, Washington et Idaho). Si l'objectif visé est la protection de la biodiversité par la conservation des habitats, les résultats semblent indiquer que l'acquisition directe de terres en vue de les réserver pour la préservation des habitats (en faisant l'acquisition de droits d'aménagement par exemple) est plus efficace que les politiques qui tentent de modifier les rendements relatifs tirés des diverses affectations des terres.     

Pollution abatement with limited enforcement power and citizen suits

Federal environmental laws in the U.S. can be enforced by government agencies or by private parties through citizen suits against polluters. Here, I extend the standard enforcement model to examine the role played by citizen suits. The main results from the paper suggest that in a model with limited enforcement power and citizen suits the regulator fully exercises his enforcement power when the expected penalty from a citizen suit is low, but increases his reliance on citizen suits as the expected penalty rises. Whether an enforcement regime that allows private enforcement is efficient depends not only on the relative costs of private and agency enforcement, but also on the changes in inspection costs that may be caused by private enforcement and the expected penalty from losing a citizen suit. These results suggest that in practice private enforcement may lower social costs as long as relatively inexpensive agency enforcement options, such as administrative proceedings, do not preclude citizen suits.      

Protecting Watershed Ecosystems through Targeted Local Land Use Policies

Land use change is the most pervasive force driving the degradation of watershed ecosystems. This article combines an econometric model of land use choice with models of watershed health indicators to examine the effects of land use policies on watershed ecosystems through their effect on land use. Our results suggest that incentive-based land use policies and property acquisition programs can have relatively large positive impacts on watershed health, while policies that change the returns to land use are less effective. The results suggest that there is potential for targeting these policies because their impacts vary across watersheds with different land use mixes.     

Self-Reporting and Private Enforcement in Environmental Regulation

Self-reporting of compliance status has become a common feature in the enforcement of environmental regulation. In this paper, I generalize existing models of enforcement with self-reporting to include the possibility of private enforcement of regulation through citizen suits. This allows me to identify an additional argument for the efficiency of self-reporting: it can increase the likelihood of a successful suit and thus facilitate private enforcement of regulation. Specifically, if self-reporting sufficiently increases the expected penalty for losing a citizen suit, if the costs of private enforcement are low, and if inspection costs are high enough relative to enforcement costs, self-reporting lowers expected regulatory and social costs by allowing the regulator to rely on private enforcement and decrease his enforcement efforts.

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