Abstract This paper studies the effect of agri-environmental measures (AEMs) in improving greener farming practices. We focus on the quantification of the effectiveness of AEMs implemented in the Rural Development Programme of the Lombardy Region, during the 2007–2013 programming period. Our work attempts to address the well-known potential failures of these kinds of policy instruments – such as adverse selection effects – by relying on an innovative matching procedure, the coarsened exact matching (CEM). This methodology presents a number of interesting properties that are worth considering in policy-evaluation analyses. Our empirical analysis focuses on three AEM schemes protecting and enhancing the environment, Crops diversification, Grassland maintenance and Organic farming. Overall, our results suggest that AEMs were apparently effective in improving the farms’ environmental performances. However, our preliminary cost-benefit analysis highlights that the costs of implementing this policy, when compared to the additional results obtained, tend to be quite large.

中文翻译：

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使用差值粗化精确匹配估计农业环境措施的影响

摘要 本文研究了农业环境措施 (AEM) 在改善绿色农业实践方面的作用。我们专注于量化在 2007-2013 年规划期间伦巴第地区农村发展计划中实施的 AEM 的有效性。我们的工作试图通过依赖创新的匹配程序，即粗化精确匹配 (CEM) 来解决这类政策工具众所周知的潜在失败——例如逆向选择效应。这种方法提供了许多值得在政策评估分析中考虑的有趣特性。我们的实证分析侧重于保护和改善环境、作物多样化、草地维护和有机农业的三个 AEM 计划。全面的，我们的结果表明 AEM 在改善农场的环境绩效方面显然是有效的。然而，我们的初步成本效益分析强调，与获得的额外结果相比，实施该政策的成本往往相当大。