PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Hongxing Liu AU - Wendong Zhang AU - Elena Irwin AU - Jeffrey Kast AU - Noel Aloysius AU - Jay Martin AU - Margaret Kalcic TI - Best Management Practices and Nutrient Reduction: An Integrated Economic-Hydrologic Model of the Western Lake Erie Basin AID - 10.3368/wple.96.4.510 DP - 2020 Nov 01 TA - Land Economics PG - 510--530 VI - 96 IP - 4 4099 - http://le.uwpress.org/content/96/4/510.short 4100 - http://le.uwpress.org/content/96/4/510.full SO - Land Econ2020 Nov 01; 96 AB - We develop the first spatially integrated economic-hydrologic model of the western Lake Erie basin explicitly linking economic models of farmers’ field-level best management practice (BMP) adoption choices with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to evaluate nutrient management policy cost-effectiveness. We quantify trade-offs among phosphorus reduction policies and find that a hybrid policy coupling a fertilizer tax with cost-share payments for subsurface placement is the most cost-effective and can achieve the policy goal of 40% reduction in nutrient loadings. We also find economic adoption models alone can overstate the potential for BMPs to reduce nutrient loadings by ignoring biophysical complexities. (JEL Q18, Q53)