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Abstract
This paper evaluates the effectiveness of changing land allocation among crops as
a mechanism for increasing social welfare, where production profits and amenity
benefits are augmented. A positive mathematical programming model is calibrated
and applied to the northern part of Israel, using a crop-discriminating amenity-benefits
function. Changes in land allocation increase social welfare by 2.4% nationwide, and
by up to 15% on the regional level. Regional scale farming-profit losses amount to up
to 6%. Due to the decreasing-return-to-scale nature of the amenity-benefits function,
the inter-regional variability appears sensitive to the manner in which the country is
divided into regions.