Jonathan Keith Yoder
PhD Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
PhD
in
Economics
Approved
Gerald Carlson, Chair
Mitchell Renkow
Charles Knoeber
Alastair Hall
March 19, 1999
Raleigh, North Carolina
Abstract
In its search for sustenance and cover, wildlife imposes costs on agricultural property owners. A mosaic of private and public contractual arrangements has evolved to address this problem, with private agricultural organizations, county commissions, wildlife agencies and state and federal departments of agriculture all involved. A set of prevalent contractual arrangements over wildlife damage is formally examined in this dissertation, including abatement labor sharing, abatement cost sharing, and damage sharing contracts. Wildlife is modeled as a public and potentially common-property good that is affected by and destructive to private agricultural inputs. Independent production choices that affect the wildlife stock may impose externalities on neighboring landowners or other interested parties. Contracts develop to account for these externalities, and contract structure is dependent on the costs associated with potential contract mechanisms. A fundamental problem of contracting over wildlife damage is that abatement labor effort is difficult to monitor by participants. Contract structures reflect this difficulty. Two of the theoretical models form the basis for empirical examinations. First, livestock producers in many western states maintain cost-share programs for predator control. A contract value function is developed for a prevalent cost-sharing rule, and the model is used to explain the observed structure and incidence of these programs across counties and states. Second, landowner incentives to alter crop choice in the face of deer-inflicted crop damage are examined. A multicrop econometric model allowing for differential damage rates across crops is estimated using data from Wisconsin. The model provides implications about the effects of changes in certain wildlife agency policy instruments. This dissertation expands the existing economic literature on wildlife damage, as well as the literature on joint production of private and public goods, the economics of pest and wildlife management, and the empirical literature on contracting over common-property and public goods. Private landowners provide much of the land on which wildlife resides, and their incentives are important in the calculus of wildlife management. This dissertation hopefully will provide a framework useful to wildlife managers for understanding the impacts on and the reactions of private landowners to wildlife damage policy.