Switching to Perennial Energy Crops Under Uncertainty and Costly Reversibility
研究农民在考虑沉没成本和收益不确定性时，将传统农田转为能源作物种植的决策，发现最优规则与净现值法及单向转换模型差异显著，并以玉米大豆轮作和柳枝稷为例说明政策补贴可能产生意外后果。
We study a farmer's decision to convert traditional cropland into land for growing dedicated energy crops, taking into account sunk conversion costs and uncertainties in crop returns. The optimal decision rules differ significantly from the expected net present value rule, which ignores uncertainties, and from real options models that allow only one‐way conversion into energy crops. These models also predict drastically different patterns of land conversions into and out of energy crops over time. Using corn–soybean rotation and switchgrass as examples, we show that the model predictions are sensitive to assumptions about stochastic processes of the returns. Government policies might have unintended consequences: subsidizing conversion costs into switchgrass may not much affect proportions of land in switchgrass in the long run.