RFF Publications

Global Climate Negotiations and Tropical Deforestation

Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes

Cost-Effectiveness of Electricity Energy Efficiency Programs

Emissions Targets and the Real Business Cycle: Intensity Targets versus Caps or Taxes

Come Rain or Shine: Evidence on Flood Insurance Purchases in Florida

U.S. Leadership in Copenhagen

The Role of the States in a Federal Climate Program: Issues and Options

The Unholy Trinity: Fat Tails, Tail Dependence, and Micro-Correlations

To Trade or Not to Trade: Firm-Level Analysis of Emissions Trading in Santiago, Chile

Climate Change in a Public Goods Game: Investment Decision in Mitigation versus Adaptation

Is Alcohol Consumption Undertaxed?

Information Disclosure And Drinking Water Quality

Resources 173 - Fall 2009: Challenges In Global Public Health

RFF's Expanding Focus on Public Health

Goings On

RFF and Human Health

This Could Be The Last Time: The Bioeconomics of Eradicating Malaria

The Right Combination Of Carrots And Sticks: Encouraging Surveillance And Reporting Of Emerging Pandemics

Congestion And The Commons: What Happens When Some Resources Are Enclosed And Others Are Open Access?

Measuring The Costs Of Air Pollution And Health In China

Fuel Tax Incidence in Developing Countries: The Case Of Costa Rica

Enforcement of Exogenous Environmental Regulations, Social Disapproval, and Bribery

Social Background, Cooperative Behavior, and Norm Enforcement

Production Risk and Farm Technology Adoption in Rain-Fed, Semi-Arid Lands of Kenya

Taxes, Permits, and the Adoption of Abatement Technology under Imperfect Compliance

Costs and Benefits for Consumers and Energy Price Effects Associated with the Allocation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Allowances

Fuel Tax Incidence in Developing Countries: The Case of Costa Rica

Traffic Safety and Vehicle Choice: Quantifying the Effects of the ?Arms Race? on American Roads

U.S. Emissions Trading Markets for SO2 and NOx

Global Climate Policy: Will Cities Lead the Way?

Allowance Allocation in a CO2 Emissions Cap-and-Trade Program for the Electricity Sector in California

The State of the Great Outdoors: America's Parks, Public Lands, and Recreation Resources

Conserving Data in the Conservation Reserve

Enrolling over 30 million acres, the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest conservation program in the United States. Under the guidelines of the CRP, the federal government pays farmers to cease farming their land in the hopes of achieving a variety of conservation goals, including reduction of soil erosion, improvement in water quality, and increases in wildlife habitat. In Conserving Data, James T. Hamilton explores the role of information in the policy cycle as it relates to the CRP. He asks how the creation and distribution of information about what is going on across these millions of enrolled acres has influenced the development of the program itself. Of the many CRP stakeholders, each accesses a different set of information about the CRP's operations. Regulators have developed the Environmental Benefits Index as a rough indicator of a field?s conservation benefits and adopted that measure as a way to determine which lands should be granted conservation contracts. NGOs have used data from these contracts to make information about how CRP monies are allocated publicly available. Congress members have used oversight hearings and GAO reports to monitor the Farm Service Agency?s conservation policy decisions. Reporters have localized the impact of the CRP by writing stories about increases in wildlife and hunting in their areas on CRP fields. Conserving Data brings together and analyses these various streams of information, drawing upon original interviews with regulators, new data from Freedom of Information Act requests, and regulatory filings. Using the CRP as a launch point, Hamilton explores on the role of information, including "hidden information" in the design and implementation of regulatory policy.

The Reality of Precaution

The "Precautionary Principle"?allowing or favoring regulation of risks despite uncertainty?has been at the center of debates about European and U.S. risk management since the 1990s. Does adopting the precautionary principle protect us against uncertain risks, or does it inhibit progress and introduce new risks? Has Europe become "more precautionary" than the United States? The Reality of Precaution is the first study to go beyond the rhetoric of precaution as an abstract principle and test the reality of precaution in practice. Challenging conventional wisdom about European and U.S. approaches to risk regulation, this groundbreaking resource finds that since the 1970s there has been little transatlantic difference in the overall level of precaution, but that instead there have been variations in precaution across particular individual risks. For example, while Europe has been more precautionary regarding genetically modified foods, beef hormones, toxic chemicals, and climate change, the U.S. has been more precautionary regarding mad cow disease, air pollution, ozone depletion, and terrorism. Moreover, both the U.S. and Europe have adopted systems of regulatory oversight through impact assessment. Combining a dozen case studies, a quantitative analysis of almost 3,000 risks,and cross-cutting chapters on politics, law, and risk perceptions, this book argues that the relationship between U.S. and European regulatory approaches is best understood not as conflict or competition, nor in terms of divergence or reversal, but rather as a process of selective application of precaution to particular risks, and a continuing exchange of ideas yielding mutual cooperation and hybridization. The Reality of Precaution advises policymakers in both the U.S. and Europe to compare actual regulatory experience, to borrow useful policy designs, and to seek optimal (not maximal) precaution that accounts fully for risks, costs, and ancillary impacts.

Finders Keepers?

Since the beginnings of the United States oil industry 150 years ago, production activity has been governed by the "law of capture," dictating that a driller owns the oil drilled from his/her property even if the oil has migrated from under neighboring land as a result of the drilling process. This "finders keepers" principle has been excoriated by foreign critics as "theft" and as a "law of the jungle" and has been blamed by American commentators?and the oil industry itself?as the root cause of the enormous waste of oil and gas resulting from U.S. production methods in the first half of the 20th century. Yet while in almost every other country the law of capture is today of only marginal significance, in the United States it continues to operate, and indeed to underpin the system of production regulation, with potentially wasteful results. In this meticulously researched and richly documented account, Terence Daintith adopts a historical and comparative perspective to show how legal rules, technical knowledge (or the lack thereof) and political events and ideas combined to shape attitudes and behavior in the business of oil production. He explains both the original adoption of the law of capture?not just in the United States but in other countries as well?and the paths of legal and political development that have led to its consolidation in the United States and its marginalization elsewhere. In contrasting these histories of the law of capture, the book raises the question of whether the U.S. can reduce waste in production without abandoning its deeply-rooted attachment to private property rights in oil and gas.

An Experimental Study of Auctions versus Grandfathering to Assign Pollution Permits

More Than a Wing and a Prayer: Government Indemnification of the Commercial Space Launch Industry

Conditional Cooperation and Social Group: Experimental Results from Colombia

To Bribe or Not to Bribe: Incentives to Protect Tanzania?s Forests

The Effect of Risk, Ambiguity, and Coordination on Farmers? Adaptation to Climate Change: A Framed Field Experiment

Some Limits of Wood Biomass for Cellulosic Biofuels

The Definition and Choice of Environmental Commodities for Nonmarket Valuation

The Whole and the Sum of its Parts: Comments on David Victor?s ?Fragmented Carbon Markets and Reluctant Nations?

An Economic Assessment of Eliminating Oil and Gas Company Tax Preferences

Water Supply and Poor Communities: What?s Price Got to Do with It?

Markets and the Environment: An Introduction to Environmental and Resource Economics

Environmental Regulation in the 1990s: A Retrospective Analysis

Alcohol/Leisure Complementarity: Empirical Estimates and Implications for Tax Policy

Fiscal and Externality Rationales for Alcohol Taxes

The Economic Valuation of Environmental Amenities and Disamenities: Methods and Applications