From Microlevel Decisions to Landscape Changes: An Assessment of Agricultural Conservation Policies
构建了一个实证模型，预测农民生产行为及农业径流变化，评估保护政策效果，发现补贴虽能增加保护措施使用，但成本效益不高，难以单独解决墨西哥湾缺氧问题。
The growth in conservation programs has created a need for modeling frameworks capable of measuring microlevel behavioral responses and macrolevel landscape changes. This paper presents an empirical model that predicts farmers' production practices and the resulting levels of agricultural runoffs at more than 42, 000 agricultural sites in the upper-Mississippi river basin under alternative conservation policies. Results suggest that payments for conservation tillage and crop rotations increase the use of these conservation practices. However, the acreage response is inelastic and the programs are not likely to be cost effective on their own for addressing hypoxia problem in the Gulf of Mexico. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.