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Dr. Khanna examines the motivations for producers to adopt innovative production technologies to meet demands for food and fuel, such as precision farming, biofuels, and to participate in conservation programs. Her work informs stakeholders and policy makers about the cost-effectiveness of various policy approaches to improve environmental quality and their implications for farm profitability, land use and food and fuel production.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1995
M.S., University of California, Berkeley, 1991
BIOGRAPHY
Research Interests
I have worked on diverse topics ranging from technology adoption and agro-environmental policy analysis, voluntary approaches to environmental protection and the land use, market and greenhouse gas implications of biofuels. My work on technology adoption seeks to provide a rationale for the often-observed low rates of adoption of efficiency-enhancing technologies and shows the importance of considering heterogeneous producer characteristics, risks, uncertainty and market failures that distort prices while analyzing the incentives to adopt these technologies. I also examine the design of conservation payments to induce the adoption of improved land management practices to reduce non-point pollution from agriculture and enhance soil carbon sequestration.
My research also examines the effectiveness of environmental information disclosure policies and voluntary pollution control programs in achieving environmental protection. I have studied the motivations for corporations to undertake voluntary environmental initiatives to reduce toxic emissions to the environment. I analyze the design of such voluntary programs, the incentives for firms to participate and the effectiveness of voluntary efforts in improving corporate environmental performance.
More recently, I have been conducting interdisciplinary research analyzing the economic and land use implications of large scale production of biofuels from the next-generation of bioenergy crops, such as perennial grasses and crop residues, and the intended and unintended impacts of biofuels on greenhouse gas emissions and water quality.
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Director, Graduate Admissions and Recruiting, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Associate Director, Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Spring 2014 to date
ACES Distinguished Professor in Environmental Economics, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
RESIDENT INSTRUCTION
ACE 411: Environment and Development
RESEARCH STATEMENT
Technology adoption and voluntary approaches to pollution control; welfare analysis of alternative policy instruments for environmental protection; economic, land use and environmental implications of biofuels; policies for carbon sequestration.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Natural resource and environmental economics
RESEARCH AREAS
Environmental and Resource Economics
BOOKS AUTHORED OR CO-AUTHORED (ORIGINAL EDITIONS)
Khanna, M., and D. Zilberman, eds. Handbook of Bioenergy and Policy (Volume II), Springer-Verlag New York, 2017.
Khanna, M., J. Scheffran and D. Zilberman, eds. Handbook of Bioenergy Economics and Policy (Volume I), Springer-Verlag NewYork, 2010.
SELECTED ARTICLES IN JOURNALS
Khanna, M., S. M. Swinton, and K.D. Messer, "Sustaining our Natural Resources in the Face of Increasing Societal Demands on Agriculture: Directions for Future Research, Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy, 40 (1), 38-59, 2018.
Oliver, A.C. and M. Khanna, "What Is the Cost of Renewable Energy-Based Approach to Greenhouse Gas Mitigation?" Land Economics, Vol. 93, No. 3, pp. 437-458, 2017.
M. Khanna, W. Wang, T. Hudiburg and E. DeLucia, "The Social Inefficiency of Regulating Indirect Land Use Change Due to Biofuels," Nature Communications, Vol. 8, p. 15513, 2017.
Miao, R. and M. Khanna, "Costs of Meeting a Cellulosic Biofuel Mandate with Perennial Energy Crops: Implications for Policy," Energy Economics, 64, 321-334, 2017.
Khanna, M., J.J. Louviere, and X. Yang, "Motivations to Grow Energy Crops: The Role of Crop and Contract Attributes," Agricultural Economics, 48(3), 263-277, 2017.
Khanna, M., H. Nunez, and D. Zilberman, "Who Pays and Who Gains from Fuel Policies in Brazil?" Energy Economics, 54: 133-143, 2016.
Hudiburg, T.W., W. Wang, M. Khanna, S.P. Long, P. Dwivedi, W.J. Parton, M. Hartmann, and E.H. DeLucia, "Impacts of a 32 Billion Gallon Bioenergy Landscape on Land and Fossil Fuel Use in the US," Nature Energy, 1:15005, 2016.
Housh, M., M. Yaeger, X. Cai, G. McIsaac, M. Khanna, M. Sivapalan, Y. Ouyang, I. Al-Qadi, A. Jain, "Managing Multiple Mandates: A System of Systems Model to Analyze Strategies for Producing Cellulosic Ethanol and Reducing Riverine Nitrate Loads in the Upper Missippi River Basin," Environmental Science and Technology, 49(19), 11932-11940, 2015.
Miao, R., M. Khanna and H. Huang, "Responsiveness of Yield and Acreage to Climate and Prices, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 48(3), 263-277, 2015.
PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES
American Economic Association
Agricultural and Applied Economics Association
Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
Sourced from https://ace.illinois.edu/directory/khanna1