Tax Incentives and the Price of Conservation
研究美国税收激励如何促进私人土地通过保护地役权进行永久性保护，发现税收优惠能有效诱导而非仅补贴保护行为，弹性估计在-2.4到-6.1之间。
We study the role of tax incentives in promoting a fast-growing and novel type of conservation: voluntary, permanent restrictions on private land use through conservation easements. In the United States, easements represent the largest charitable gift on a per-donation basis, but skeptics wonder if their tax preference merely subsidizes wealthy landowners rather than inducing conservation. We incorporate federal and state income tax codes into a calculator to quantify the after-tax donation price and demonstrate its sensitivity to landowner income and state and federal policies. Using a 1987–2012 panel, we measure the response of state-level easements to the price. Our large elasticity estimates, spanning −2.4 to −6.1, indicate that tax incentives induce conservation and do not merely subsidize it. We find no evidence that generous tax benefits have caused less strategic patterns of land conservation.