B. McCarl - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by B. McCarl

Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics

We examine the economic tradeoff between the costs of pre-event preparedness and post-event respo... more We examine the economic tradeoff between the costs of pre-event preparedness and post-event response to the potential introduction of an infectious animal disease. In a simplified case study setting, we examine the conditions for optimality of an enhanced pre-event detection system considering various characteristics of a potential infectious cattle disease outbreak, costs of program implementation, severity of the disease outbreak, and relative effectiveness of postevent response actions. We show that the decision to invest in pre-event preparedness activities depends on such factors as probability of disease introduction, disease spread rate, relative costs, ancillary benefits, and effectiveness of mitigation strategies.

Environmental Research Letters, 2015

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, higher temperatures, altered precipitation patterns... more Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, higher temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and other climate change impacts have already begun to affect US agriculture and forestry, with impacts expected to become more substantial in the future. There have been numerous studies of climate change impacts on agriculture or forestry, but relatively little research examining the long-term net impacts of a stabilization scenario relative to a case with unabated climate change. We provide an analysis of the potential benefits of global climate change mitigation for US agriculture and forestry through 2100, accounting for landowner decisions regarding land use, crop mix, and management practices. The analytic approach involves a combination of climate models, a crop process model (EPIC), a dynamic vegetation model used for forests (MC1), and an economic model of the US forestry and agricultural sector (FASOM-GHG). We find substantial impacts on productivity, commodity markets, and consumer and producer welfare for the stabilization scenario relative to unabated climate change, though the magnitude and direction of impacts vary across regions and commodities. Although there is variability in welfare impacts across climate simulations, we find positive net benefits from stabilization in all cases, with cumulative impacts ranging from 32.7billionto32.7 billion to 32.7billionto54.5 billion over the period 2015-2100. Our estimates contribute to the literature on potential benefits of GHG mitigation and can help inform policy decisions weighing alternative mitigation and adaptation actions.

China Agricultural Economic Review, 2013

ABSTRACT Purpose ‐ This study aims to explore Taiwan's potential for bioenergy production... more ABSTRACT Purpose ‐ This study aims to explore Taiwan's potential for bioenergy production using feedstocks grown on set-aside land and discusses the consequent effects on Taiwan's energy security plus benefits and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Design/methodology/approach ‐ The Modified Taiwan Agricultural Sector Model (Modified TASM), based on price endogenous mathematical programming, was used to simulate different agricultural policies related to bioenergy production. To do this simulation, the TASM model was extended to include additional bioenergy production possibilities and GHG accounting. Findings ‐ Taiwan's bioenergy production portfolio depends on prices of ethanol, electricity and GHG. When GHG prices go up, ethanol production decreases and electricity production increases because of the relatively stronger GHG offset power of biopower. Originality/value ‐ Taiwan is interested in producing bioenergy but only limited information is available. This study provides the information on potential bioethanol and bioelectricity production from various energy crops, GHG emission offset from bioenergy, and regional energy security.

Animals, 2011

World communities are concerned about the impacts of a hotter and drier climate on future agricul... more World communities are concerned about the impacts of a hotter and drier climate on future agriculture. By examining Australian regional livestock data on sheep, beef cattle, dairy cattle, and pigs, the authors find that livestock production will expand under such conditions. Livestock revenue per farm is expected to increase by more than 47% by 2060 under the UKMO, the GISS, and a high degree of warming CSIRO scenario. The existence of a threshold temperature for these species is not evident.

An Interdisciplinary Assessment, 2007

ABSTRACT Integrated assessment modeling (IAM) as employed by the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) gene... more ABSTRACT Integrated assessment modeling (IAM) as employed by the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) generally involves a multi-sector appraisal of greenhouse gas emission (GHGE) mitigation alternatives and climate change effects typically at the global level. Such a multi-sector evaluation encompasses potential climate change effects and mitigative actions within the agricultural and forestry (AF) sectors. In comparison with many of the other sectors covered by IAM, the AF sectors may require somewhat different treatment due to their critical dependence upon spatially and temporally varying resource and climatic conditions. In particular, in large countries like the United States, forest production conditions vary dramatically across the landscape. For example, some areas in the southern US present conditions favorable to production of fast growing, heat tolerant pine species, while more northern regions often favor slower-growing hardwood and softwood species. Moreover, some lands are currently not suitable for forest production (e.g., the arid western plains). Similarly, in agriculture, the US has areas where citrus and cotton can be grown and other areas where barley and wheat are more suitable. This diversity across the landscape causes differential GHGE mitigation potential in the face of climatic changes and/or responses to policy or price incentives. It is difficult for a reasonably sized global IAM system to reflect the full range of sub-national geographic AF production possibilities alluded to above. AF response in the face of climate change altered temperature precipitation regimes or mitigation incentives will likely involve region-specific shifts in land use and agricultural/forest production. This chapter addresses AF sectoral responses in climate change mitigation analysis. Specifically, we draw upon US-based studies of AF GHGE mitigation possibilities that incorporate sub-national detail drawing largely on a body of studies done by the authors in association with EMF activities. We discuss characteristics of AF sectoral responses that could be incorporated in future IAM efforts in climate change policy.

Transactions of the ASAE, 1980

With the increasing research interests in biofuels, global implications of biofuels production ha... more With the increasing research interests in biofuels, global implications of biofuels production have been generally examined either in a partial equilibrium (PE) or general equilibrium (GE) frameworks. Though both of these approaches have unique strengths, they also suffer from many limitations due to complexity of addressing all the relevant aspects of biofuels. In this paper we have exploited the strengths of both PE and GE approaches for analyzing the economic and environmental implications of the U.S. policies on corn-ethanol and biodiesel production. In this study, we utilize the Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model (FASOMGHG: Adams et al. 1996, 2005; Beach et al. 2009), a non-linear programming, PE model for the United States. We also use the GTAP-BIO model (Birur et al. 2008), a multiregion, multi-sector CGE model for global-scale assessment of biofuels policies. Following Britz and Hertel (2009), we link the GTAP-BIO model through a static, quadratic restricted revenue function obtained from perturbing crop prices from the FASOMGHG model. With this linkage we implement the U.S. Corn ethanol and biodiesel scenarios in the GTAP-BIO model and obtain the FASOMGHG-consistent, global land use changes. The resulting crop price changes from the GE model are fed back into the FASOMGHG model to obtain the disaggregated impacts in the U.S.

Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies - 6th International Conference, 2003