This dissertation compared existence values held by Portland, Maine (United States) and Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea) residents for the preservation of ten percent of the worlds tropical rain forests and identified economic and noneconomic components of existence value and use values. Existence value was narrowly defined as cognitive in nature; it is the value placed on simply knowing tropical rain forests exists independent of current and future use values. Between November 1998 and February 1999, a 16 page mail-back questionnaire was sent to a random sample of residents in Portland and Port Moresby. A total of 330 and 461 questionnaires were returned from Portland, and Port Moresby, respectively for an overall response rate of 41 and 49 percent, respectively. The results indicated that noneconomic components of mean willingness to pay (WTP) accounted for at least 50 percent of the total value for both Portland and Port Moresby residents. Noneconomic components of existence value (intrinsic value, good cause, moral duty etc) and use value (nonpaternalistic altruism) were excluded to avoid presenting overestimated benefits. Portland and Port Moresby WTP estimates were found to be statistically different from each other. This finding invalidated the assumption that benefits could be directly transferable between countries, especially between developed and developing countries. This result was also supported by evidence of statistical differences in motives and socioeconomic variables between Portland and Port Moresby respondents. Portland residents generally had a higher value for existence (as a proportion of total mean WTP) than Port Moresby residents. Both the Portland and Port Moresby WTP estimates were lower than Kramer and Mercers' (1997) US estimates. Results from the attitudinal models showed that Port Moresby respondents were more environment oriented than Portland respondents. The latter were more development oriented. Port Moresby respondents expressed the sentiment that the rich nations of the world (including the US) should bear the responsibility of preserving tropical rain forests.

This dissertation is an attempt to contribute to the literature that seeks to move beyond income-centered approaches to environmental degradation by examining the other socio-economic factors that influence environmental quality. The first part of the dissertation utilizes the Russian Statistical Agency's data on air pollution and deforestation in Russia to answer the question of what relationship, if any, exists between the quality of governance, income and power inequalities and environmental degradation. The major finding here is that, holding income constant, greater inequalities in income and in the provision of public goods are associated with more environmental degradation. The second part of this dissertation addresses the question of what impact, if any, inequalities among Russia's regions have on environmental degradation at the regional level. By developing two methods for distinguishing between changes in the absolute level of income and changes in the relative level of income, and controlling for the former, this dissertation finds that regions with lower relative incomes have more uncontrolled pollution and more net deforestation than regions whose incomes are high in relative terms. Moreover, these differences cannot be attributed simply to differences in spending on environmental protection; they appear to reflect differences in the location of environmentally degrading activities.

The availability of fresh water is becoming an increasing concern around the world. Modern agriculture has made a transition from traditional agriculture, which often impacts watershed systems. Current enterprising agriculture yields monetary benefits but at the same time can impact environmental outcome. Water resource impacts vary from micro to macro scale. Chapter 1 starts with an introduction. In Chapter 2, I develop an integrated dynamic-based model at farm scale to evaluate the economic and environmental effects of alternative agricultural best management practices (BMPs) on overall sustainability of integrated farming system. It is an integration of a farm simulation model, soil erosion model and dynamic based model. Economic and environmental dynamic simulations are performed over a time horizon for each management practice. Marginal efficiency analysis is performed for examining economically efficient crop support practice with the consideration of change in environmental parameters' and profit accrued from the farm. Scenario outcomes of the stochastic modeling simulation results show varied impacts on sustainability of the farm-balanced scenario performs better overall. Chapter 3 discusses hydrology model at watershed scale to assess conjunctive water harvesting potentials in an urbanizing watershed system. I develop a spatially explicit method to evaluate costs of harvesting and potential benefits in water harvesting. It involves an evaluation of surface and groundwater hydrology in developed and undeveloped regions of the watershed. I develop prioritization maps to characterize conjunctive harvesting potential that is based on benefits and costs. The results demonstrate that a spatially variable harvesting strategy can be used to minimize runoff loss and to augment water supplies. A spatially variable approach that incorporates economic criteria to hydrologic assessment can be used to enhance efficiency related to water harvest and supply management. In Chapter 4, I develop a watershed based policy framework that identifies four policy types that target depletion, recharge, contamination and treatment. The policy package incorporates a mix of policies that target quantity and quality dynamics. The socio-economic implications of excessive extraction of ground water are assessed with the sustainability indicators of productivity from farms, distribution of income among different categories of farmers, groundwater level, and quality. A watershed based policy package covering both structural and nonstructural policies is suggested for achieving sustainability of water resources. Water quality degradation at macro scales involves economic as well as demographic factors. In Chapter 5, I use the concept of Environmental Kuznets Curve to examine the relationship between water quality degradation and economic development, and test the hypothesis of differences in functional relationship for nitrogen, phosphorus, suspended solids, fecal coliform and dissolved oxygen. The results show that the behavior of EKC is different for different water quality indicators. Nitrogen, phosphorous and suspended solids exhibit a U-shaped curve while fecal coliform and dissolved oxygen show N-shaped EKC curve. As transformation occurs from agriculture economy to industrialized economy, water quality improves with the reduction in nutrient and physical contaminants. The dissertation ends up with a conclusion in Chapter 6.

Perpetuation of economic growth and social well-being will continue to require energy to power our economic and technological infrastructures. Continuing to meet these energy demands as we do today is constrained by the existence of a finite resource stock and the ability of the local and global environments to assimilate the emissions of the current energy sources. A transition to renewable energy sources provides a means to sustain economic and social well-being by eliminating the resource and environmental constraints of conventional energy sources. The term sustainability has been broadly adopted to evoke the idea of providing future generations with a society which is at least no worse off than our own. Literature in this field is reviewed and includes contributions from a broad spectrum of disciplines with economic, technical, ethical, and philosophical affirmations. Energy policy in the United States was recently addressed in the National Energy Strategy under the Bush Administration. The policy fails short of confronting resource or environmental sustainability issues and is focused on short term solutions without preparing for long term needs. Alternative models and policy proposals have surfaced as a reaction to the government study. An economic and policy model is developed in this dissertation which addresses specific characteristics of a long term national energy transition to renewable energy sources. The Energy and Environmental Economic Transition (E$\sp3$T) model is built on traditional economic analyses to integrate the conventional and renewable energy supply and demand sectors. The renewable energy sector is characterized by technical parameters and endogenous treatment of technological change and market penetration. Policy variables are employed to evaluate resource stock, tax, subsidy, pollution abatement, market structure, and other policies. The E$\sp3$T model is a simulation tool which produces paths of conventional and renewable energy supply and price levels over a sufficient time frame. Other evaluation output variables are developed to address issues of economic cost and sustainability. Although the input database and model details are insufficient to apply the simulation results directly to policy formulation, results are presented to illustrate the model's capabilities and distinctions relative to other energy policy models.

The first essay, "Federalism in Environmental Policy," explores the question of how Congress should decide on implementation of environmental statutes. This issue arises from the hypothesis that the historical pattern of U.S. federalism has led to ineffective implementation of environmental laws at the state level. We use a case-study approach to focus on the transboundary pollution problem of acid rain. Drawing from the basic philosophy of federalism, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of four arguments for state policy responses to pollution problems, including: (1) severity, (2) wealth, (3) partisanship, and (4) organizational capacity. These arguments are evaluated using a geographic information system and then incorporated into an econometric model to identify the determinants of state decisions on transboundary air pollution. Based on the econometric results and the basic theory of federalism, we develop economic criteria to explore how congressional decisionmakers may more systematically choose state, regional, or national implementation of environmental laws based on instate and external benefits and costs of the individual statute. In the second essay, "Compliance and Enforcement Issues, A Case Study of Massachusetts' Environmental Results Program," we present a theoretical model of a firm's decision to comply with performance standards. The model is motivated by recent efforts in Massachusetts to adopt a more flexible environmental management strategy, the "Environmental Results Program" (ERP). This program has two main components: (1) development of performance standards, and (2) implementation of a self-certification program for environmental compliance. Because the standard pollution control model fails to capture the importance of monitoring, enforcement, and penalties, we modified it to incorporate a firm's private compliance decisions. The resulting marginal private benefit function represents the avoided costs of punishment based on a probability of being caught in non-compliance. Finally, the third essay, "The Penalty-Compliance Tradeoff in Enforcement by States," presents a game theoretic model of a firm's compliance with performance standards and self-certification. The model builds on standard enforcement theory and the case study of the ERP in an effort to evaluate the strategic interaction between control agencies and regulated facilities.

Protection of the environment is among the most pressing public policy challenges and will continue to be so long into the future. Pollution, specifically, has played a pivotal and substantial role in the degradation of the environment. Although numerous analytical techniques and computational solutions have been proposed by theoreticians from disciplines as varied as economics to environmental engineering and decision sciences, significant methodologies that provide a rigorous analysis for the modeling, qualitative analysis, and computation to solutions to environmental problems which are typically complex and large-scale remain yet to be harnessed. The goal of this dissertation is to present a series of models in marketable pollution permits that yield the profit-maximized quantities of the firms' products and the equilibrium quantities of the firms' emissions. In addition, the equilibrium allocation of pollution licenses and their prices are obtained. Furthermore, different modes of market structure, including oligopolistic behavior and non-compliant behavior, and market imperfections such as transactions costs are incorporated into the modeling framework. Investment in technology, specifically production technology and emission-abatement technology, are explicitly considered in the models. Lastly, the dissertation concludes with a shift from the static setting to a dynamic setting and the marketable pollution permit model is analyzed within a dynamic framework that allows firms to be noncompliant. The dissertation begins with a brief historical overview of the evolution of environmental economics followed by the theoretical foundations of the mathematical framework employed. The principal methodology that is utilized for the models in the dissertation is that of variational inequalities. We will also make use of the projected dynamical systems to analyze the models within a dynamic setting. We conclude this dissertation with possible extensions of the models developed and provide suggestions for future research. The dissertation is a major step in the advancement of mathematical methodologies coupled with environmental policy analysis to contribute fundamentally to the formulation and evaluation of environment policy. This research is highly interdisciplinary as it encompasses the fields of management science and operations research, environmental economics, and applied mathematics.

This dissertation takes a retrospective look at the first decade of EPA's implementation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act commonly known as Superfund. Two models are employed that reflect EPA's implementation of Superfund: a rational threats game-theoretic bargaining model and a discrete choice empirical model. The game theoretic hazardous waste bargaining model produces an elegant and simple decision rule. Using this decision rule, EPA compares the expected transaction costs incurred because of litigation against EPA's prospects for a court-ordered award. The agency enters into bargaining when the savings from avoiding litigation is equal to the court-ordered award. EPA and the coalition of responsible parties bargain about how to share site clean-up costs (mixed funding) and when successful, enter into a voluntary settlement. The discrete choice empirical analysis reveals that high transaction costs, lengthy delays in site clean-ups and limited enforcement/litigation characterize EPAs implementation of CERCLA during the decade ending in 1990. Differences in how EPA implements this legislation across EPA Regions is explored. Compared to the other Eastern EPA Regions, EPA Region 4 is less likely to litigate and more likely to use Superfund monies to clean up hazardous waste sites.