Grazing Fees versus Stewardship on Federal Lands

Myles J. Watts, Jay Shimshack and Jeffrey LaFrance ()

No 7151, CUDARE Working Papers from University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Abstract: Livestock grazing on public lands continues to be a source of intense conflict and debate. We analyze this problem using a dynamic game. Low grazing fees let ranchers capture more rent from grazing. This increases the incentive to comply with federally mandated regulations. Optimal grazing contracts therefore include grazing fees that are lower than competitive private rates. The optimal policy also includes random monitoring to prevent strategic learning by cheating ranchers and avoid wasteful efforts to disguise noncompliant behavior. Finally, an optimal policy includes a penalty for cheating beyond terminating the lease. This penalty must be large enough that the rancher who would profit the most from cheating experiences a negative expected net return.

Keywords: Land; Economics/Use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/7151/files/wp061022.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Grazing Fees versus Stewardship on Federal Lands (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ucbecw:7151

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.7151

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CUDARE Working Papers from University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().