Efficiency‐Equity Tradeoffs in Targeting Payments for Ecosystem Services
构建分析框架研究生态系统服务付费中经济效率与分配公平的权衡，并应用于美国保护储备计划，发现管理者牺牲约9%效率换取18%-23%的公平改善，且可通过重新设计目标标准同时提升两者。
Abstract This article develops an analytic framework to analyze the tradeoff between economic efficiency and distributional equity in targeting payments for ecosystem services (PES). It also proposes an empirical procedure to trace out the efficiency‐equity frontier, where the program is Pareto optimal in the sense that it cannot be improved upon to achieve either higher efficiency or distributional equity without compromising the other. We apply the procedure to the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the largest PES program in U.S. history, to analyze ( a ) whether it is possible to improve both the efficiency and the distributional equity of the program, and ( b ) what the choice made by CRP administrators implies about the political‐economic balance. Results reveal that ( a ) CRP administrators forfeited about 9% of efficiency for an 18% – 23% improvement in distributional equity, depending on the equity indicator used, in the eighteenth signup of the CRP; ( b ) reducing the maximum allowable rental rate for all contracts would improve efficiency at the cost of distributional equity; ( c ) reducing the maximum county enrollment cap would reduce efficiency without generating much improvement in distributional equity; and ( d ) the CRP targeting criterion could be redesigned to achieve both higher efficiency and higher distributional equity.