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This study examines the optimal allocation of funds between national and urban parks. Since travel costs to national parks are significantly higher than to urban parks, poor households tend to visit the latter more frequently, whereas rich households favor the former. Therefore, allocating public funds to improving the quality of national parks at the expense of urban parks disproportionately benefits high income households. By developing a theoretical model and implementing it using Israeli data, findings indicate all households, except for the richest decile, prefer that the park authority divert a larger proportion of its budget from national to urban parks.

This paper investigates the effects of first-best policies to regulate nitrogen application. Some nitrogen fertilizer is applied ex ante before a random rainfall, but side-dressed nitrogen may be applied ex post. First-best policy is a tax or a quota on ex ante application, because side-dressed nitrogen is not leached. Since a risk-averse farmer uses more nitrogen ex ante than a risk-neutral farmer, a higher tax must be imposed on the former. Action equivalent first-best taxes and quotas are also welfare equivalent. An empirical model for wheat in Israel was used to demonstrate the analytical findings.

The risk premium and the probability premium are used to determine appropriate coefficients of absolute risk aversion under CARA utility. A defensible range of risk aversion coefficients is defined by the coefficients that correspond to risk premiums falling between 1 and 99% of the amount at risk or to probability premiums falling between .005 and .49 for a lottery that pays or loses a given sum. The consequences of ignoring risk premiums when selecting risk-aversion coefficients for representative decision makers are illustrated by calculation of the implied risk premium associated with the levels of absolute risk aversion assumed in six selected studies.

Governments generally use a mix of temporary hectare payments and provision of public services to stimulate the organic crop sector. In this paper, a conceptual model is developed for determining a socially optimal hectare payment for any given level of public services. Farm heterogeneity, due to the variability of soil quality and management skills, is explicitly taken into account. Using an nth price auction mechanism, farmers indicate what their reservation subsidy is for a given level of public input provision. The results of this auction are used to determine the governments optimal policy choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]