Concerns over the effects of private land use on the supply of environmental amenities have led to an increasing global reliance on conservation contracting initiatives (Ferraro and Kiss 2002). The term “conservation contracting” describes the contractual transfer of payments from one party (e.g., government) to another (e.g., landowner) in exchange for land use practices that contribute to the...

Natural environments and the amenities they offer have fueled much of the population growth in the rural United States (Deller et al. 2001, English et al. 2ooo). In fact, the fastest growing counties in the United States during the early 1990s were non-metropolitan counties that were destinations for retirees or that offered outdoor recreation opportunities (Johnson and Beale 1994). Migration t...

This paper explores the potential for the housing market to inform public policy in Ireland by developing a model of the determinants of the cost of accommodation. It does this by using a rich dataset of sales and lettings accommodation costs in Ireland over the period 2006-2010. A large empirical literature has grown up around a core concept that households pay to enjoy particular amenities. F...

Population density varies widely among U.S. metro areas. A simple, static general equilibrium model demonstrates that moderate differences in metro areas’ consumption amenities can cause extremely large differences in their population density. Such amenities are more strongly capitalized into housing prices than into wages. Empirical results suggest that amenities do indeed help to support high...

We use GIS and econometric methods to estimate the marginal implicit values of environmental amenities associated with residential land parcels in the mountain town of Logan, Utah. Amenities include proximity to open spaces (such as parks, golf courses and lakes), commercial zones, major roads, streams, and general visibility of surrounding topography in the valley as determined by the elevatio...

This paper examines the effects of environmental zoning policies on lakefront land development, sorting, and economic welfare in a model where agents are heterogeneous in preferences and income. Agents consume lakefront amenities that are endogenous to development and the sorting process yields lakes which differ by amenities and frontage prices. Our findings include the following: i) lakes bec...