R. Garth Taylor

Willingness to pay for non angler recreation at the lower Snake River reservoirs

This study applied the travel cost method to estimate demand for non angler recreation at the impounded Snake River in eastern Washington. Net value per person per recreation trip is estimated for the full non angler sample and separately for camping, boating, water-skiing, and swimming/picnicking. Certain recreation activities would be reduced or eliminated and new activities would be added if the dams were breached to protect endangered salmon and steelhead. The effect of breaching on non angling benefits was found by subtracting our benefits estimate from the projected non angling benefits with breaching. Major issues in demand model specification and definition of the price variables are discussed. The estimation method selected was truncated negative binomial regression with adjustment for self selection bias.

Modeling Conjunctive Water Use as a Reciprocal Externality

A reciprocal externality is created in the conjunctive use of hydrologically connected surface and ground water. Hydrologic and economic modeling are integrated to conduct basin-wide cost benefit analysis to address the market failure of reciprocal conjunctive use externalities. An n-node partial equilibrium model was formulated in which economic equilibrium was defined by a system of complementary slackness equations. The general model was applied to a three-node example of a ground water pumper that enjoys the positive externality of canal seepage while inflicting a negative externality of pumping-induced seepage upon a canal water user. Exogenous demand, supply, and canal conveyance variables were parameterized using site-specific functional forms and data. The example was solved using mixed complementary programming for the endogenous equilibrium water prices which in turn were used to calculate consumer and producer surplus in the respective surface and ground water markets. A Pigouvian tax/subsidy policy was contrasted against two real-world policies; eliminating the externality through conservation infrastructure and aquifer recharge. The Pigouvian tax/subsidy aligns prices to erase the wedge between social and private costs. The reciprocal externality produces feedback between the surface and ground water markets that reinforces or cancels the tax/subsidy effect. The recharge payment prices canal seepage via a payment from pumper to canal user that matches the decrease in total pumping cost attributable to the seepage resulting from canal diversion. The Pigouvian tax/subsidy yielded the highest social welfare, followed by the aquifer recharge payment. Conserving water by lining the leaky canal decreased social welfare.

Can Superior Natural Amenities Create High-Quality Employment Opportunities? The Case of Nonconsumptive River Recreation in Central Idaho

ABSTRACT Central Idaho has superior environmental amenities, as evidenced by exceptionally high-value tourism, such as guided whitewater rafting. The focus of our study concerns the attainment of high-quality jobs in a high-quality natural environment. We estimate cumulative wage rate effects unique to nonconsumptive river recreation in central Idaho for comparison with other sectors. The cumulative effects are based on a detailed survey of recreation spending and a modified synthesized input–output model. Cumulative wage rate effects support using the abundance of environmental amenities to expand and attract high-wage, environmentally sensitive firms, as opposed to expanded tourism to improve employment quality.

Regional Economic Impacts of the Snake River Steelhead and Salmon Recovery

Remaining runs of wild steelhead trout, sockeye, and chinook salmon on the Snake River are threatened with extinction, and wild coho salmon are declared extinct. Huge sums are being spent to recover the endangered anadromous fish. Hatchery steelhead trout and salmon provide recreational fishing as far inland as Idaho. This study utilizes a modified Leontief input–output model and a detailed spending survey of anglers to estimate the current and potential regional economic impact of steelhead and salmon sportfishing in central Idaho. Recent studies are in extreme disagreement over the size of fishery impacts in Idaho and the Columbia River Basin.

Estimation of Short and Long Run Derived Irrigation Water Demands and Elasticities

Short-run and long-run derived irrigation water demand functions are estimated using shadow price data obtained from a profit maximization mathematical programming model. Crop and soil-type specific production functions are expressed in terms of applied irrigation water. Demand functions for two South Central Idaho counties are estimated using linear, semi-log, double-log, and Box-Cox transformation forms. Price elasticities, at the mean shadow prices, range from 0.8 to 1.2, 1.49 to 1.84, and 2.9 to 4.9, for short run, long run with deficit irrigation, and long run with no deficit irrigation, respectively.

SPATIAL AND VARIETAL PRICE ANALYSIS OF DRY EDIBLE BEAN MARKETS

Dry bean prices, as received by the grower and the dealer, were analyzed for four different production regions, and for two of the major varieties grown in the US. The dry bean price series were not stationary. Prices for each variety were cointegrated across the production regions and between grower and dealer markets. However causality tests failed to show the dominant regional variety as the price leader. Further, prices of the two varieties were not cointegrated, which indicated that growers would benefit from growing more than one variety at the same time.

A Framework for Assessing the Effect of Irrigation Improvements: Economic Rivalry, Irrigation Abstraction, and Partition to Fates

Responsible application of finite resources to infinite needs means that proposals for irrigation improvement must be weighed and assessed. The assessment requires an understanding of the changes in flux, and the social, ecological and economic effect of such changes. This paper is focused on evaluation of changes in flux, not discounting the vital components of weighing the implications of the changes. A useful criterion for the assessment of the flux implications of improvements to irrigation efficiency is the net effect to basin water supplies. The flux assessment can be performed with four necessary and sufficient exercises: (1) Consider irrigator response to the change; (2) Close the water budget on all changes in flux resulting from the irrigator response; (3) Consider the economic rivalry effects of the changes in flux; (4) Quantify changes in supply to all affected participants. This paper focuses on the effect that these four factors have upon water flow, with the implicit assumption that flow impacts ecosystem services, private user benefits, and social equity. Knowledge of changes in flow is a necessary but not a sufficient input to the evaluation of these factors. Irrigator response can be assessed based on an assumption of rational profit-maximizing behavior, and on the legal and social bases of water use. Closing the water budget can be performed using methods found in an extensive literature describing evaporation, transpiration, irrigation requirements, irrigation efficiency, and the various fates of the non-consumed fraction of field-applied irrigation water. The physical effects of irrigation improvements can be further partitioned using the concepts of economic rivalry. The framework presented allows policy makers to evaluate the effects that improvements will have not only upon the improved water use and the new use to which “saved” water will be devoted, but also to the secondary effects and beyond, upon human uses or ecosystem services that currently rely upon the “waste” stream resulting from nominally inefficient application and use. While it is acknowledged that evaluation of ecosystem services requires greater knowledge of ecosystem functions than is available in many basins, at least this framework calls attention to the services and provides a quantification of the flux of water delivered to them.

Evaluating a Water Conservation Response to Climate Change in the Lower Boise River Basin

Aquifers created or sustained by seepage losses from Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) Projects extend over vast areas of western states. Yet agricultural water conservation measures such as canal lining top the list of State and Federal policies for mitigating the effect of water shortages brought about by climate change. Cost benefit analysis (CBA) of new Reclamation water conservation infrastructure such as canal lining or piping is too often Project-specific, and detached from basin hydrology. The value of canal seepage as a positive externality is thus ignored in CBA. A basin-wide approach to hydro-economic modeling that accounts for the externalized costs and benefits of both canal seepage and new canal lining conservation insures that incidental aquifer recharge is recognized in CBA of Federally financed irrigation water conservation measures. Integrated hydrologic and partial equilibrium models are employed in the Lower Boise River basin to calculate the foregone benefit to non-project groundwater and drain water irrigation of a hypothetical Boise Project canal lining response to projected climate change water shortages. Basin-wide hydrologic response data is used to compute shifts in non-project groundwater supply functions and drain water supply constraints, and a base-case water supply scenario is compared to six climate change scenarios in which projected water shortages are offset by lining of project canals. The foregone net benefit to non-project groundwater and drain water irrigation resulting from elimination of the canal seepage externality (US

Climate change opportunities for Idaho's irrigation supply and deliveries

4.4–22.6million depending on the scenario) outweighs the increase in net benefit to Boise Project irrigation by canal lining (US

The Demand for Wine Tourism in Canyon County, Idaho

1.4–19.3million). On average, foregone groundwater and drain water irrigation benefit exceeds restored canal irrigation benefit by about 38%. Canal lining conservation is unable to restore total basin-wide irrigation net benefit to the base-case level in any of the climate change scenarios; rather it shifts the foregone benefit of climate change shortages from project canal irrigation to non-project groundwater and drain water irrigation. The canal lining CPA is not a complete accounting of either costs or benefits of canal lining conservation. On the cost side, only the foregone benefits of eliminating the positive canal seepage externality are calculated; construction and maintenance costs of canal lining are omitted. On the benefit side, Arrowrock canal irrigators are assumed to be the sole beneficiary of reduced seepage losses.