Estimating the effects of agri-environmental measures using difference-in-difference coarsened exact matching

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.