2002 World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists

The purpose of this article was to study the economics of Sweden's scheme of 'multiple' arable nitrogen abatement instruments. A large-scale, spatially distributed mathematical programming model that linked changes in agricultural production practices to coastal nitrogen load was developed. Actual abatement policy induced 21% abatement. A first-best solution to 21% abatement required increased concentration of commodity production and remaining land to be farmed relatively more profitably. A second-best solution required sparser production and less cost-effective commodity production. Under actual policy, relative abatement was too high in the fertile southern coastal regions than either of the benchmarks. The choice of efficiency benchmark was critical to defining 'cost-effective' policies. Abatement could be increased without causing excessive inefficiencies with a) incentives that also steer crop choice decisions and b) increased relative abatement in less profitable regions. Coordination of environmental and agricultural policy could offer considerable efficiency gains.



	Paper Title:	The Cost-Efficiency Of Swedish Arable-Nitrogen Abatement Policy
	Presenting Author:	Mark Brady (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)
	Coauthor 1:
	Coauthor 2:
	Coauthor 3:
	Abstract:	The purpose of this article was to study the economics of Sweden's scheme of 'multiple' arable nitrogen abatement instruments. A large-scale, spatially distributed mathematical programming model that linked changes in agricultural production practices to coastal nitrogen load was developed. Actual abatement policy induced 21% abatement. A first-best solution to 21% abatement required increased concentration of commodity production and remaining land to be farmed relatively more profitably. A second-best solution required sparser production and less cost-effective commodity production. Under actual policy, relative abatement was too high in the fertile southern coastal regions than either of the benchmarks. The choice of efficiency benchmark was critical to defining 'cost-effective' policies. Abatement could be increased without causing excessive inefficiencies with a) incentives that also steer crop choice decisions and b) increased relative abatement in less profitable regions. Coordination of environmental and agricultural policy could offer considerable efficiency gains.
	Link to paper:	http://weber.ucsd.edu/~carsonvs/papers/650.pdf

	Session / Day / Time	17D / Thursday / 4:30 - 6:00 pm

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