Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Can Peers Improve Agricultural Revenue?, Tisorn Songsermsawas, Kathy Baylis, Ashwini Chhatre, Hope Michelson

Kathy Baylis

Crop revenues vary greatly among farmers and the source of that variation is not fully understood. Using a household survey from India, we estimate peer effects on cash crop revenue. Results show that 60% of farmers' revenue can be explained by peers. Peer effects in input expenditure and land allocation cannot fully explain the variation in revenue, implying peers may also associate with management, negotiation and marketing strategies. Although caste-based networks are important, their effect is substantially smaller than that of self-reported peers. Peer effects are strongest for agricultural peers and in the cultivation of a new crop.

Trade-Facilitated Technology Spillovers In Energy Productivity Convergence Processes Across Eu Countries, Kathy Baylis, Peter Mulder

Kathy Baylis

This empirical paper tests for trade-facilitated spillovers in the convergence of energy productivity across 16 European Union (EU) countries from 1995 to 2005. One might anticipate that by inducing specialization, trade limits the potential for convergence in energy productivity. Conversely, by inducing competition and knowledge diffusion, trade may spur sectors to greater energy productivity. Unlike most previous work on convergence, we explain productivity dynamics from cross-country interactions at a detailed sector level and apply a spatial panel data approach to explicitly account for trade-flow related spatial effects in the convergence analysis. Our study confirms the existence of convergence in manufacturing …

How Effective Are Biodiversity Conservation Payments In Mexico?, Sebastien Costedoat, Esteve Corbera, Driss Ezzine De Blas, Jordi Honey-Roses, Kathy Baylis, Miguel Angel Catillo-Santiago

Kathy Baylis

Mainstreaming Impact Evaluation In Nature Conservation, Kathy Baylis, Jordi Honey-Roses, Jan Boerner, Esteve Corbera, Driss Ezzine-De-Blas, Paul Ferraro, Renaud Lapeyre, Martin Persson, Alex Pfaff, Sven Wunder

Kathy Baylis

Evaluating Heterogeneous Conservation Effects Of Forest Protection In Indonesia, Payal Shah, Kathy Baylis

Kathy Baylis

Spatial Environmental And Natural Resource Economics, Amy Ando, Kathy Baylis

Kathy Baylis

Environmental and natural resource economics has long wrestled with spatial elements of human behavior, biophysical systems, and policy design. The treatment of space by academic environmental economists has evolved in important ways over time, moving from simple distance measures to more complex models of spatial processes. This chapter presents knowledge developed in several areas of research in spatial environmental and natural resource economics. First, it discusses the role played by spatial heterogeneity in designing optimal land conservation policies and efficient incentive policies to control pollution. Second, it describes the roles space plays in non-market valuation techniques, especially the hedonic and …

Spread And Backwash Effects For Non-Metropolitan Communities In The U.S., Joanna Ganning, Kathy Baylis, Bumsoo Lee

Kathy Baylis

Few studies empirically estimate the effects of metropolitan growth on non-metropolitan communities at a national scale. This paper estimates the growth effects of 276 MSAs on population in 1,988 non-metropolitan communities in the United States from 2000-2007. We estimate the distance for growth spillovers from MSAs to non-metropolitan communities and test the assumption that a single MSA influences growth. We compare three methods of weighting cities’ influence: nearest city only, inverse-distance and relative commuting flow to multiple cities. We find the inverse-distance approach provides slightly more reliable and theoretically supportable results than the traditional nearest city approach.

Spatial Analysis Of Illinois Agricultural Cash Rents, Shannon Woodard, Nicholas Paulson, Kathy Baylis, Joshua Woodard

Kathy Baylis

During the summer of 2008, corn futures prices rose 119.8% compared to the previous year. The resulting nominal prices were the highest in history. Anecdotal evidence implied that much of these benefits accrued to land owners through increased land values and cash rent levels. In this article, we use unique farm-level data and novel spatial econometric tools to determine how farmland rents are affected by changes in commodity prices and government payment levels. Contrary to predictions from the Ricardian rent model, we find that tenant farmers are able to capture the vast majority of price increases and a large fraction …

The Distributional Effects Of Nafta In Mexico, Kathy Baylis, Rafael Garduno-Rivera, Gianfranco Piras

Kathy Baylis

This paper studies the regional distribution of benefits from trade in Mexico after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Specifically, we ask whether or not NAFTA increased the concentration of economic activity in Mexico. Unlike previous work which uses state-level data, we identify the effect of NAFTA on economic activity at the municipal level allowing us to observe detailed growth patterns across space. To explicitly identify the effect of the trade agreement, we contrast changes in economic activity in regions and sectors more and less likely to be affected by trade. Given the spatial nature of these data, we …

Do Our Conservation Programs Work? A Spatially Explicit Estimate Of Avoided Forest Loss, Jordi Honey-Roses, Kathy Baylis, Maria Isabel Ramirez

Kathy Baylis