What do economists know about land-and how they know? The Oxford Handbook of Land Economics describes the latest developments in the fields of economics that examine land, including natural resource economics, environmental economics, regional science, and urban economics. The handbook argues, first, that land is a theme that integrates these fields and second, that productive integration increasingly occurs not just within economics but also across disciplines. Greater recognition and integration stimulates cross-fertilization among the fields of land economics research. By providing a comprehensive survey of land-related work in several economics fields, this handbook provides the basic tools needed for economists to redefine the scope and focus of their work to better incorporate the contemporary thinking from other fields and to push out the frontiers of land economics.

The first section presents recent advances in the analysis of major drivers of land use change, focusing on economic development and various land-use markets. The second section presents economic research on the environmental and socio-economic impacts of land use and land use change. The third section addresses six cutting-edge approaches for land economics research, including spatial econometric, simulation, and experimental methods. The section also includes a synthetic chapter critically reviewing methodological advances. The fourth section covers policy issues. Four chapters disentangle the economics of land conservation and preservation, while three chapters examine the economic analysis of the legal institutions of land use. These chapters focus on law and economic problems of permissible government control of land in the U.S. context.

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About the Author

Joshua M. Duke is Professor of Natural Resource Management in the Department of Applied Economics and Statistics at the University of Delaware. He has joint appointments in the Department of Economics, the Legal Studies Program, and the Marine Science and Policy Program. During an exchange, he was Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Law at the Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra, Slovakia. His research areas include land use economics, analysis of agri-environmental policy, law and economics of the environment, and property rights. He has published more than 40 refereed journal articles, chapters, and law reviews. Previously, he was editor (with Titus Awokuse) of Agricultural and Resource Economics Review.

JunJie Wu is the Emery N. Castle Professor of Resource and Rural Economics at Oregon State University. He is a University Fellow at Resources for the Future; a Senior Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, UK; and a Chang-Jiang Visiting Professor at Renmin University of China. His research areas include the optimal design of agri-environmental policy, spatial modeling of land use change, and regional disparities in economic development. He has published more than 70 refereed journal articles and has received several awards for quality research, including the American Agricultural Economics Association Quality of Research Discovery Award.