Buying Ecological Services: Nature's Harmonies, Fragmented Reserves and the Agricultural Extensification Debate

David Hennessy and Harvey Lapan

Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University

Abstract: Growing demand for cropland products has placed intense pressure on the ability of land resources to support nature, straining public budgets to purchase environmental goods. Fixing overall agricultural output, two policy options are whether to promote more extensive and nature friendly farming practices or to produce intensively on some land and leave the rest wild. Microeconomic models of the topic have not accommodated widely recognized complementary spatial externalities in providing ecological services. This article does so, identifying also a third policy possibility. This is that environmental services can follow a smoothly varying spatial path characterized by harmonic functions.

Keywords: biofuels; environmental policy; spatial externalities; Wirtinger's inequality. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 H40 Q28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ias:cpaper:08-wp482

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