| This dissertation contains three essays. The first is entitled “Property Tax Treatment of Farmland: Does Tax Relief Delay Land Development?” I investigate use-value assessment, a state policy allowing farmland to be assessed at its agriculture-only value, rather than its full market value. Using Census data from 2963 counties over 1959–1987, I test the effect of use-value assessment on the proportion of county land in farming. Estimates indicate that after adoption, use-value assessment produced a gradually increasing proportion of farmland relative to counties who did not have the policy. The effect rose to ten percentage points more land in farming after twenty years. I present a model of the landowner's decision to develop farmland for urban uses and derive the effect of use-value assessment policy on the optimal development timing. The second essay is “State and Local Government Employment: Do Governments Respond Asymmetrically to Changes in Incomes?” I develop models for changes in government employment that allow an asymmetric response to increases and decreases in per capita private income to see whether government employment increases more in years of economic growth than it decreases in years of economic decline. I develop a model that does not require special assumptions to predict a positive relationship between the dependent and independent variables, and estimate it with U.S. Census data from 1970 to 1991 for 48 states. Results demonstrate symmetrical government employment response to incomes and are quite robust, holding consistently for several functional forms and other specifications of asymmetric response. I find that Democratic and Republican governors hire equivalently, but may slow layoffs in election years.; The third essay is “Energy Efficiency, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Soil Management in Crop Production.” I develop a theoretical model for optimal factor intensity (input per unit output). Using cross-sectional data from USDA's 1996 Agricultural Resource Management Survey, I estimate the models for energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from corn production. Results show that reduced tillage uses less energy and produces lower greenhouse gas emissions per bushelF, but no-till is not significantly more energy- and emissions-efficient than other reduced tillage technologies. |
