Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / I explore the ecological, economic, and policy determinants of agricultural land conversion in the Brazilian Amazon. Economic drivers of land-use change are quantified by rent, which is calculated using ecological and physiological models of biological productivity and spatial economic models for the costs of moving agricultural products to market. The validity of this approach is tested empirically by estimating spatially efficient logit models that simulate land-use change in the Mato Grosso region between 2001 and 2004. My empirical measures for agricultural rent are used to quantify the desirability of a particular plot of land, which previous research represents with simple proxies, such as distance to roads or urban areas, climate, and soil type. Statistical results indicate that my measure of economic rent subsumes the explanatory power of previous proxies. This result is consistent with economic theory, which posits that it is not simply access or variation in transportation costs that drives the spatial pattern of agricultural expansion, but the expected total returns from the venture. I extend the analysis of competing economic uses by comparing spatially explicit estimates of soybean rents to the value of ecosystem services. Although these estimates for these uses are generated from different data sets, models, and estimation techniques, the values are comparable, such that the value of ecosystem services is greater than soybean rents for about 61 percent of the total area. Given this balance, the failure to value ecosystem services reduces total social welfare. Policy instruments that internalize the value of ecosystem services via land conversion taxes, conservation subsidies, or excise taxes can avoid much of this loss. Together, these results suggest that spatially explicit models of economic rents and value of ecosystem services can be used to simulate the location and quantity of land-use change in an economically consistent framework. Such a framework lays the foundation for an enhanced methodology that can evaluate the ability of fiscal policy levers to influence the location of agricultural conversion with the ultimate aim of balancing economic and environmental goals. / 2031-01-02