Lawrence W. Libby

Ervin, David, James Fitch, Kenneth Godwin, Bruce Shepard, and Herbert Stoevener. Land Use Control: Evaluating Economic and Political Effects. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1977, 184 pp.,

Public programs to intervene in the private land use market are designed to achieve land use and distribution of costs and benefits much different from those that would prevail under market conditions. This book suggests a framework for evaluating these public-policy measures from the standpoint of three economic efficiency criteria: how land-use-planning measures contribute to the avoidance of certain negative effects resulting from interdependencies among land uses; how they perform in providing land-related public goods; and, are they likely to lead to an efficient provision of public services. Beyond these economic-efficiency considerations the study emphasizes the distributional consequences and the political acceptability of land-use-planning measures. Land-use techniques--traditional zoning, zoning by eminent domain, and transferable development rights--are evaluated and compared. Although none of these techniques can be judged superior to the others on the basis of all or several of the evaluative criteria, zoning ranked highest in terms of political acceptability while the extensions of zoning are improvements over zoning for meeting equity and efficient provision of public goods.

17.50

The problems and issues related to the subject of this session are of staggering complexity. The major challenge is to impose some order on the whole mass and to identify priorities for constructive action. Of necessity, we have limited the topic to a more manageable scope. Within that scope we have identified several different priority actions, not the full array of actions that warrant immediate and important concern. This paper focuses upon rural development including natural resource use. It gives attention to economic development at the local, substate regional, and broader levels, and to information challenges requiring prompt action or consideration. We have divided our presentation into five parts: a general framework or strategy for subjecting this topic to some systematic scrutiny; identification of some key problems or issues in rural America and tasks concerning them that serve as guideposts for judging priority actions for information system improvement; a discussion of the need to avoid implementation of narrowly conceived information systems designed for one purpose but that may become institutionalized and subsequently the basis for unintended decisions and uses; opportunities for supplementing current information systems that are basically sound but that have major gaps because of new policy issues or decision choices; and suggestions for new information systems or approaches, the exploration and development of which could begin immediately. In the process, we will draw upon findings and recommendations of members of the American Agricultural Economics Association Task Force on Social and Economic Statistics. Members of the Task Force have considered several areas of data or information system improvement. A number of discussion papers were developed (Bawden and Kershaw; Bryant; Daft; Edwards; Gardner 1973; Madden; Vlasin 1973). These background papers constitute significant contributions to the intellectual overhead for progress in this

Economic and Social Information for Rural America: Priorities for Immediate Improvement

Abstract The Social Assessment of Fisheries Resources (SAFR) Symposium explored potentials for more fully using the problem-solving abilities of social sciences in fishery management. The SAFR papers examine the theory, methods, and applications of economics, sociology, anthropology, political science, and philosophy in relation to the kinds of evaluations faced by fishery managers, particularly in North Americas Great Lakes region. In this symposium overview, we consider whether a “total value framework” could be developed to assess all pros and cons of changes in fishery resources. We reject the notion of a perfect, uniform, quantitative total value assessment method, recognizing that existing assessment practices underrepresent some value elements and overrepresent others. Total value concepts must consider both basic human values (“held” values) and monetary or equivalent values, such as those in benefit–cost analysis (“assigned” values). Out total value framework illustrates the difficulty of reconc...

In Search of a Total Value Assessment Framework: SAFR Symposium Overview and Synthesis

Economic analysis can be a guide to determining the level of actions taken to reduce nitrogen (N) losses and reduce environmental risk in a cost-effective manner while also allowing consideration of relative costs of controls to various groups. The biophysical science of N control, especially from nonpoint sources such as agriculture, is not certain. Widespread precise data do not exist for a river basin (or often even for a watershed) that couples management practices and other actions to reduce nonpoint N losses with specific delivery from the basin. The causal relationships are clouded by other factors influencing N flows, such as weather, temperature, and soil characteristics. Even when the science is certain, economic analysis has its own sets of uncertainties and simplifying economic assumptions. The economic analysis of the National Hypoxia Assessment provides an example of economic analysis based on less than complete scientific information that can still provide guidance to policy makers about the economic consequences of alternative approaches. One critical value to policy makers comes from bounding the economic magnitude of the consequences of alternative actions. Another value is the identification of impacts outside the sphere of initial concerns. Such analysis can successfully assess relative impacts of different degrees of control of N losses within the basin as well as outside the basin. It can demonstrate the extent to which costs of control of any one action increase with the intensity of application of control.

Economic Analysis as a Basis for Large- Scale Nitrogen Control Decisions: Reducing Nitrogen Loads to the Gulf of Mexico

INTRODUCfiON There are two basic underlying premises for this paper. The first one is that economics is still a useful discipline. That is, an understanding of economic concepts can contribute to a diagnostic analysis of socio-economic change in the Northeast (among other things), identification of policy options, and even choice. Economic paradigms are versatile and mobile. They help people decide how to deal with all difficult social problems. This assertion is certainly not a foregone conclusion and has in fact been contested rather vigorously. In some circles, clearly those less inform,ed, economics as a discipline has been labeled the viilain, the cause for social ills from poor roads to dirty air and water. I would not suggest that all economic advice is good, but that is the fault of the practitioner, not the discipline. Economics, like any other social science, can generate apparent scientific objectivity to support just about any motive of the user. There are virtually no sterile concepts in the discipline. When used to guide choice, all economic principles acquire a normative flavor, inevitably benefiting some interests more than others. Scarcity, the beginning of economics, means interdependence and choice based normative judgments. The challenge for economists as social scientists and particularly as policy analysts is to employ the robustness for the discipline for useful purpose, to provide . insights helpful to policy and avoid being intimidated by our own discipline. This leads me to my second premise, that judgments, prescriptions and analyses by economists are probably as good as or better than those offered by anyone else. We owe itJo ourselves to be involved. My purpose in this paper is to examine several policy issues surrounding our conference theme in the context of providing information useful for decisions. I am not reporting on a specific research project, but will draw on recent studies in suggesting an appropriate research theme. In essence, my assertion is that to be helpful in current efforts by society to render timely, sensitive decisions on use or misuse of natural resources, economists must pay more attention to the process and rules by which rights, access and opportunities to use those resources are distributed among people. First, the straw man.

CONFLICTING RIGHTS TO RURAL RESOURCES: A Research Strategy for Improved Public Choice

Dr. Henry has prepared a very thorough ment work, we tend to rely too much on anecand thoughtful assessment of research needs dotal empiricism in drawing conclusions about concerning the relationships between farms what is happening to farms and to farmers and and rural communities in the South. He has other rural people. Dr. Henry is correct in been true to his reputation-Dr. Henry does asserting the importance of a better data not skim lightly over any topic. He has system to monitor who and what is out there diagnosed the subject area carefully, referenced in rural America. His proposal for investing in current literature in his appraisal of research a consistent set of social accounts makes real and policy needs, and drawn very defensible sense. There are frequent requests for the conclusions. Better still, his conclusions are analysis that would be possible from such a basically consistent with my biases. To have system. Policy makers want to know, for exones intuitive conclusions substantiated by ample, the total economic consequences assothe experts is heady stuff indeed. The points ciated with a certain change in the local in his paper with which I disagreed most con- economy. These are real questions, not theses sistently were found in extensive quotes from or dissertations or journal articles, though others, so we are clearly both on the right presumably the effort to provide answers track. could generate an intermediate product of

SOUTHERN FARMS AND RURAL COMMUNITIES: DEVELOPING DIRECTIONS FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH AND POLICY: DISCUSSION

Abstract Critics have demanded that zoning be abolished in favor of the free market, while others have suggested extensive reforms. In this months commentary, economics professor Lawrence Libby responds to the advocates of the free market approach to land use, while Mark Wyckoff surveys calls for reform and comments on zonings progress.