The purpose of this paper is to theoretically examine the efficiency of a cost‐share agri‐environmental program through a farm life cycle lens. Faced with a growing environmental impact from agricultural production, the farmer must decide when and how aggressively to invest in environmental capital. The steady state of the optimal control problem reveals the trade‐off between allocating farm profits to consumption versus environmental improvements. A payment from a cost‐share program reduces the time to investment in environmental capital, and also permanently increases the farmer's level of investment. A lack of targeting results in inframarginal farmers being paid more than the minimum amount that is required to induce investment. The portion of both the marginal payment and the average payment that induces new investment declines as the government's share of the payment increases, and this decline decreases overall program efficiency. Despite this inefficiency, a larger payment from a cost‐share program is shown to decrease the farm's environmental impact in both the short and long run.

中文翻译：

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成本分担农业环境计划的动态分析

本文的目的是从理论上通过农场生命周期的角度来检验成本分担式农业环境计划的效率。面对农业生产对环境造成的日益严重的影响，农民必须决定何时以及如何积极地投资于环境资本。最优控制问题的稳定状态揭示了将农场利润分配给消费与环境改善之间的权衡。成本分担计划的付款减少了对环境资本的投资时间，也永久提高了农民的投资水平。缺乏针对性导致超边际农民的报酬高于引诱投资所需的最低额。边际支付和平均支付中引起新投资的那部分随着政府在支付中所占份额的增加而下降，这种下降降低了总体计划效率。尽管效率低下，但从成本分摊方案中获得更大的回报，无论从短期还是长期来看，都显示出降低了农场对环境的影响。