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.

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.

List of Contributors
Foreword - Daniel W. Bromley
Preface - Joshua M. Duke and JunJie Wu
Introduction: Land as an Integrating Theme in Economics - Joshua M. Duke and JunJie Wu
PART I. DETERMINANTS AND DRIVERS OF LAND USE CHANGE
1. Integrating Regional Economic Development Analysis and Land Use Economics
Mark D. Partridge and Dan S. Rickman
2. Technology Adoption and Land Use
David Zilberman, Madhu Khanna, Scott Kaplan, and Eunice Kim
3. Are Large Metropolitan Areas Still Viable?
Edwin S. Mills
4. Modeling the Land Use Change with Biofuels
Madhu Khanna, David Zilberman, and Christine L. Crago
5. Modeling the Determinants of Farmland Values in the U.S.
Cynthia J. Nickerson and Wendong Zhang
6. Land Use and Sustainable Economic Development: Developing World
Edward B. Barbier
PART II. ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF LAND USE AND LAND USE CHANGE
7. The Economics of Wildlife Conservation
David J. Lewis and Erik Nelson
8. Connecting Ecosystem Services to Land Use: Implications for Valuation and Policy
Robert J. Johnston, Stephen K. Swallow, Dana Marie Bauer, Emi Uchida, and Christopher M. Anderson
9. Land Use and Climate Change
Bruce A. McCarl, Witsanu Attavanich, Mark Musumba, Jianhong E. Mu, and Ruth Aisabokhae
10. Land Use, Climate Change, and Ecosystem Services
Witsanu Attavanich, Benjamin S. Rashford, Richard M. Adams, and Bruce A. McCarl
11. Fire: An Agent and a Consequence of Land Use Change
Claire A. Montgomery
12. Land Use and Municipal Profiles
Edward Stone and JunJie Wu
PART III. METHODOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS
13. An Assessment of Empirical Methods for Modeling Land Use
Elena G. Irwin and Douglas Wrenn
14. Equilibrium Sorting Models of Land Use and Residential Choice
H. Allen Klaiber and Nicolai V. Kuminoff
15. Landscape Simulations with Econometric-Based Land-Use Models
Andrew J. Plantinga and David J. Lewis
16. An Economic Perspective on Agent-Based Models of Land-Use and Land-Cover Change
Dawn Cassandra Parker
17. Spatial Econometric Modeling of Land Use Change
Seong-Hoon Cho, Seung Gyu Kim, and Roland K. Roberts
18. Using Quasi-Experimental Methods to Evaluate Land Policies: Application to Maryland's Priority Funding Legislation
Charles Towe, Rebecca Lewis, and Lori Lynch
19. Applying Experiments to Land Economics: Public Information and Auction Efficiency in Ecosystem Service Markets
Kent D. Messer, Joshua M. Duke, and Lori Lynch
PART IV. THE ECONOMICS OF LAND USE LAW AND POLICY
20. Open Space Preservation: Direct Controls and Fiscal Incentives
Ekaterina Gnedenko and Dennis Heffley
21. Land Conservation in the United States
Jeffrey Ferris and Lori Lynch
22. European Agri-Environmental Policy: The Conservation and Re-Creation of Cultural Landscapes
Ian Hodge
23. Agri-Environmental Policies: A Comparison of U.S. and E.U. Experiences
Roger Claassen, Joseph Cooper, Cristina Salvioni, and Marcella Veronesi
24. Stigmatized Sites and Urban Brownfield Redevelopment
Joel B. Eisen
25. Regulatory Takings
Thomas J. Miceli and Kathleen Segerson
26. Eminent Domain and the Land Assembly Problem
Joshua M. Duke
27. Future Research Directions in Land Economics
Joshua M. Duke and JunJie Wu