Land Use & Environment

Work listed under Environmental Economics might best be seen as observations emerging from other lines of inquiry. That there have been quite a few should not be surprising because agricultural production generates environmental impacts. Production economists have grown accustomed to working on environmental issues, and also to working with environmental economists. Work listed under Land Use generally had a distinct genesis and typically stops at land use choice, not dealing with environmental implications of these choices. Land use work was motivated first by extending work on how crop insurance and other risk management affect production choices on a given acre (intensive margin) to impacts on how many acres (extensive margin). Later, extensive margin impacts of technology change and also climate change were studied. Ongoing work in the area focuses on the economics of attenuated property rights (easements) and also on curious land use choices that pose challenges for standard economic analysis.