Reducing Social Losses from Forest Fires
评估了两种财政激励（土地所有者分担灭火成本、政府分担燃料清理成本）对非工业林地所有者减少火灾损失的效果，发现前者总能降低社会损失，后者仅在火灾风险高时更有效，且改善信息能大幅减少损失。
ABSTRACT.We evaluate two financial incentives to encourage nonindustrial forest landowners to undertake activities that mitigate fire losses: sharing of fire suppression costs by the landowner and sharing of fuel reduction costs by the government. First and second best outcomes are identified and compared to assess the effectiveness of these incen-tives in reducing social losses and fire suppression costs, under various assumptions about landowner behavior and information. We find that while cost sharing of fire suppression by the landowner in-variably reduces social losses, this is not always true for government cost sharing of landowner fuel re-duction. However, cost sharing of fuel reduction can yield larger reductions in social losses when fire risk is high. Both policies tend to induce larger re-ductions in both social losses and fire suppression costs when landowners engage in fuel reduction. We find that improving a landowner’s information about fire risk and fuel reduction can yield sub-stantial reductions in social losses. I.