Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Economics Research Institute Study Paper

Volume

95

Issue

13

Publisher

Utah State University Department of Economics

Publication Date

1995

Rights

Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact the Institutional Repository Librarian at digitalcommons@usu.edu.

First Page

1

Last Page

10

Abstract

In a two-period model, economists such as K.J. Arrow, A.C. Fisher, and C. Henry, have shown that when development is both indivisible and irreversible, a developer who ignores the possibility of obtaining new information about the outcome of such development will invariably underestimate the benefits of preservation and hence favor development. In this note, I extend the AFH analysis in two directions. I model the land development problem in a dynamic framework, explicitly specifying an information production function. In such a setting, I then ask and answer the question concerning when development should take place.

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