This dissertation analyzes the environmental impact of state policies in Cuban agriculture, and compares state farms, family farms, and cooperative farms, with respect to their management of natural resources. Organizational forms of agricultural production are distinguished by the property rights and production technologies used by farming units. I examine the premise that family farmers have adequate incentives to engage in resource conservation measures. Conversely, I examine the premise that state property rights do not structure adequate incentives for resource conservation in state farms. Finally, I compare private farms and state farms with cooperatives, in terms of their resource management in practices. Because of the important role of central planning in natural-resource management under socialism, the dissertation also analyzes environmental policies and the evolution of the system of environmental protection in Cuba. I argue that while state ownership of natural resources and planning create the opportunity to incorporate environmental concerns into economic decision-making, environmental concerns are secondary to production goals. Moreover, the public does not have sufficient information, nor the mechanisms, for choosing higher levels of environmental quality. At the same time, enterprise managers do not have sufficient incentives to voluntarily comply with environmental regulations, and the environmental agency lacks the power to enforce them.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0652. Adviser: Amy W. Ando. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-154) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4436. Adviser: Bruce J. Sherrick. Includes bibliographical references. Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2587. Adviser: Scott H. Irwin. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-101) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> This research is composed of three essays. It highlights the driving factors of land conversion and crop acreage response focusing on North Dakota agriculture and estimates the benefits of conservation land measures at west central South Dakota watershed. The major questions that are addressed here are how and why agricultural producers decide among different land use choices, crop selection, and land conservation measures and how their decision vary over time? The first essay examines the long run land conversion trend interconnected with change in crop, oil, and ethanol prices, climate and renewable fuel policy mandates. Data are obtained from Cropland Data Layer from 1997 to 2015 period of National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) at the USDA. The first essay employs a Seemingly Unrelated Tobit Regression approach to better understand the connection between land conversion and crop prices, biofuel policies, biophysical environment. Key findings indicate land-use conversion from grassland to cropland is relatively higher across the ND counties. </p><p> The second essay is designed to investigate the relationship between crop acreage response and socio-economic and environmental drivers. We use prices for crude oil, planted acres of major crops (corn, wheat, soybean, hay) and prices from the period of 1990 to 2015. This essay focuses on corn acreage response due to crop prices, energy policies, climate and other socio-economic factors using a Fixed Effect parameter framework. </p><p> The final essay estimates environmental benefits due to adoption of conservation practices. In other words, it analyzes the economic and environmental benefits of implemented conservation practices at Bad River watershed in South Dakota using an integrated framework. For example, in an article in the Global Journal of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development (2016), a Benefit Cost Analysis model is utilized to assess soil conservation benefits and evaluate economic impacts of conservation measures at a watershed scale. The economic analysis includes estimation of benefit cost ratio, annual rate of return of conservation practices. Key findings suggest that benefit value of sediment reduction average $2.13 per ton expressed in constant (year = 2000) dollars and the ratio of benefits to costs is greater than 1.</p><p>

<p> Many reasons have been suggested as explanation for observed differences in citizens' environmental conservation projects policy choices and willingness-to-pay (WTP) values. Some people attribute this distinctive decision behavior to contrasts in the overall policy outcome expectations (preference heterogeneity) and/or differences in reactions to the changes in the environmental attributes (response heterogeneity). Others attribute this to differences in individual choice rationales, personalities, encounters, and past and present experiences. In other words, regardless of the possibility that outcomes are the same, people do not have the same emotions, convictions, disposition, or motivations. </p><p> In three separate essays, I investigate the possible reasons for the observed differences in citizens' environmental conservation policy choices and examine how preference and response heterogeneity arise. In the first essay, I ask if a priori environmental damage perception is a source of heterogeneity affecting conservation option choice decisions. In the second, I investigate if social networks (interactions among decision-making agents) affect choice decisions. In the third, I investigate if preferences change when decision making agents are allowed to deliberate among peers. </p><p> For the first essay, I conducted an on-line choice experiment (CE) survey. The survey asked questions that help to measure citizen preference for protecting environmental public goods, ascertain the value local residents are willing-to-pay (WTP), and determine how preference heterogeneity arises. CE attributes included groundwater use (measured by share of total water use from groundwater), aquatic habitat (measured by count of spawning kokanee salmon return), natural habitat health (measured by the sensitive ecosystem area reclaimed), and rural character (measured by a decrease in urban sprawl and/or a decrease in population density in rural areas). I used a special property levy as the vehicle of payment. Random parameter logit (RP) and latent class (LC) models were estimated to capture response and preference heterogeneity. The results suggest that (1) both preference and response heterogeneities were found for the choices and all environmental attributes respectively (2) respondents who have a higher value for one environmental good will have a higher value for other environmental goods, and (3) a priori damage perception could be one of the sources of response and preference heterogeneity. </p><p> In the same survey, I included people's egocentric networks, interactions, environment related activities and perceptions to empirically evaluate whether social network effect (SNE) is a source of systematic differences in preference. I estimate consumer preferences for a hypothetical future environmental conservation management alternative described by its attributes within a Nested Logit Model: nesting broader and distinct conservation options within choices impacted by individual&rsquo;s network structure. The results show that some network centrality measures capture preference heterogeneity, and consequently the differences in WTP values in a systematic way. </p><p> Third, I compare the value estimated based on the traditional choice experiment (CE) with the results obtained using the citizen jury (CJ) approach or a group-based approach or also called the "Market Stall" in some literature. I estimate the effect of deliberation on conservation choice outcomes by removing any significant differences between the people who participated in the CJ (people who volunteered to be contacted again after deliberation treatment) and those people who did the survey twice but did not volunteer for CJ (control group) in terms of their socioeconomic status and be able attribute the changes in preferences to deliberation treatment only. CJ approach involved two 90 minute deliberations held over two days to discuss and consider their preferences and WTP values with other household members. Results show that deliberation improves individuals' valuation process and there is observed difference in choice outcomes between the deliberation treatment and control groups. Both preference and response heterogeneity relatively vanish when people were allowed to deliberate among peers.</p>

Most energy sources are derived from the sun, directly or indirectly. Stopping the increase of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will likely require more reliance on current rather than ancient terrestrial solar input. Yet which forms of renewable energy are most appropriately used is a significant question for the twenty-first century. This dissertation concerns the potential supply of biomass energy crops as a renewable energy source in Massachusetts. Biomass represents a low-efficiency solar collector, and supplying society with an important portion of its energy from biomass would require a great deal of land. The cellulosic biomass crop evaluated in this research is switchgrass, among the most studied of possible biomass crops. The study looks at biomass energy crop potential from three perspectives. First, a biomass crop supply function is developed for switchgrass by (1) using a GIS model to estimate land availability by current land use and soil type; (2) using a crop-growth simulation model to estimate potential switchgrass yields; (3) estimating marginal production cost by land parcel; and (4) calculating a supply function from marginal production costs. Total technical potential is estimated to be about 1.3 million dry metric tons of switchgrass per year, though financial constraints would likely limit production to some portion of the estimated 125,000 metric tons per year that could be produced on existing grasslands. Next, the study examines circumstances under which landowners might opt to make land available for biomass crop production. The social challenge of minimizing biomass energy cost is described. Potential biomass crop landowner decisions are characterized in a theoretical utility maximization model, with results suggesting that non-price attributes of crop production are likely important to landowners. Finally, an empirical study using a landowner survey assesses interest in growing biomass crops, and uses contingent valuation (CV) to estimate landowner willingness to accept (WTA) land rent for biomass crops. The median estimate is $321/ha/yr, with a much-higher mean estimate of $658/ha/yr (based on a parametric estimator). While the realistic potential for biomass crops is some fraction of technically feasible potential, there are other potentially important roles for biomass crops in Massachusetts, for example in preserving unused farmland that would otherwise revert to forest.

This dissertation studies the role of the collective action sector for rural development. A combination of formal modeling, historical and institutional analysis, and econometric methods is used in this research. I develop microeconomic models to analyze the determinants of peasants' decisions to join cooperative institutions, and the corresponding equilibrium fraction of organized peasants. The models suggest multiple organizational equilibria at both local and wider levels. Multiple cooperative equilibria is explained in general by the interplay of two increasing functions: (i) the proportion of cooperators as a function of the expected gains from cooperation, and (ii) the expected gains from cooperation as a function of the proportion of cooperators. The models also study the mechanisms through which cooperation beyond the local level can be achieved. Empirically, I analyze the motivations behind peasants' decisions to organize themselves, and once organized, the ways inequality, gender differences, social capital, and external assistance affect local cooperation. The empirical component of this dissertation is based on fieldwork with peasant organizations in the Paraguayan departments of Concepcion, San Pedro, and Caaguazu carried out between 1995-1996. The results of the fieldwork include two surveys: one of the leadership of 104 peasant committees and the other of 374 peasant households. The most important results of the econometric analysis are that the likelihood of a peasant household joining a peasant organization is an inverse function of higher outside options, the security of her/his landholdings, and the subjective costs of cooperation, and is a positive function of the performance of the cooperative. Cooperative performance is not monotonically related to either the degree of inequality within the community or the level of external assistance; rather, it is of an inverted U-shape form. Cooperative performance increases as the level of women's participation and social capital increases. This dissertation also explores the relationship between democracy and economic development by analyzing the agrarian political economy of Paraguay for the 1954-1996 period. It argues that (i) peasants' organizations play a significant role in rural development and (ii) there is scope for positive synergy between peasants' organizations and the level of political democracy in an agrarian country.

This dissertation examines the consolidation and erosion of the economic and political institutions governing the economic growth process in a small, predominantly agrarian, open economy. In particular, it explains the economic crisis in Paraguay in the 1980s under the military regime (1954-1989). The dissertation asserts that the end of the boom and the later long stagnation was a result of the shift in not only external but also in the internal conditions affecting profitability and investment. The fiscal crisis of the state and the increase of both the Ricardian effect in agriculture and the product wage (as well as the fall of the world market prices of primary commodities and the slowdown of foreign direct investment), undermined the profitability and accumulation. These claims are substantiated by an institutional history, a simple two sectoral model, and econometric estimations.

<p> The identification of factors contributing to the farmers' non-retention of subsidy dollars is key in identifying the impact of the subsidy within and across the sector. Relaxing the assumption of perfect competition, amongst input suppliers, allows for an analysis of two upstream of complementary goods. Because it is the case that the farmers are price takers for some inputs (seed) and may negotiate over the price of others (land), I assume the upstream input providers are more akin to Bertrand competition. General findings, from the theoretical and experimental results, indicate upstream market power as having a significant impact on the economic subsidy incidence; and the complementary between the famer's inputs is the main driving force of the results.</p>