Adjacency Externalities and Forest Fire Prevention
研究了林地所有者因火灾风险而做出的管理决策如何受邻近地块影响，导致社会效率损失，并探讨了通过要求地主分担政府灭火成本来纠正这种外部性的政策。
This paper models landowner behavior on timberland subject to damage by fire. We examine how management decisions by adjacent landowners yield outcomes that diverge from the social optimum, and consider how this divergence depends on landowner preferences and information. We conduct a numerical simulation in which landowners interact through the effects of their fire prevention activities on a common risk of fire. The results reveal significant social inefficiencies related to externalities associated with private fuel treatment decisions. We consider a policy for aligning social and private decisions by requiring landowners to share the government’s cost of fire suppression. <i></i>