a Rocky Mountain Station, USDA Forest Service Fort Collins, CO, 80524 USA
b Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO, 80523 USA
Abstract:
This paper estimates production functions for environmental outputs (measured with condition indicators) from forest and rangelands at the national scale. A particular production structure is discussed for this purpose, and two approaches to handling the spatial nature of the data are investigated. Improved explanatory power appears to result from “kriging” the data into a uniform grid of observations, as opposed to aggregating the data into the lowest common unit (in this case, counties). The equations themselves are also discussed, and elasticities are utilized to interpret independent variable effects that include levels and interactions terms.