Multiple Conflicts Over Multiple Uses

Product Description
This volume explores ways to "unlock the gridlock" over federal land use by taking a property rights approach to management decisions.
The fundamental premise underlying this approach is that incentives matter. Under the current management regime the incentive for all actors is to fight in the legislative, regulatory, and judicial arenas in a zero-sum game where one party's gain is the other's loss. Such controversy will continue as long as the spoils of battle are left up for grabs in the political process.
The chapters in this book offer some examples of how incentives may be changed within the implicit status quo distribution of power.

Contents: To Fee or Not to Fee: The Economics of Below-Cost Recreation; Making Money on Timber Sales: A Federal and State Comparison; Reform of the 1872 Mining Law: A Primer; Cows, Cowboys, and Controversy: The Grazing Fee Issue; Greasing the Skids for a New Federal Oil and Gas Leasing System. Distributed for The Political Economy Research Center.
From the Back Cover
The Political Economy Research Center has been at the forefront of debates over public land management for more than a decade. Under the banner of free market environmentalism, PERC scholars have advocated more reliance on market processes to allocate amenities and commodities on the federal estate. This volume examines the prospects for reducing conflicts over public land management by substituting markets for bureaucracies. The chapters deal with recreation, timber, grazing, mining, and oil, and gas development. In each case, a list of feasible and effective policy recommendations is presented. The conclusion is that a healthy dose of free market environmentalism is the best way to eliminate the "multiple conflicts over multiple uses", to reduce the drain on the federal treasury and to promote cooperation.
About the Author
Terry L. Anderson is Professor of Economics at Montana State University. He is co-author of
Free Market Environmentalism with Donald Leal, and author or editor of ten other books.