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.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Director, Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment
ACES Distinguished Professor, Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Professor, Agricultural and Consumer Economics
Professor, Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences
Professor, Nutritional Sciences
Professor, Center for Global Studies
Professor, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology
Professor, Center for Digital Agriculture, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
Recent Publications
Kumar, S., & Khanna, M. (2023). Distributional heterogeneity in climate change impacts and adaptation: Evidence from Indian agriculture. Agricultural Economics (United Kingdom), 54(2), 147-160. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12765
Stewart, D. W., Cortés-Peña, Y. R., Li, Y., Stillwell, A. S., Khanna, M., & Guest, J. S. (2023). Implications of Biorefinery Policy Incentives and Location-Specific Economic Parameters for the Financial Viability of Biofuels. Environmental Science and Technology, 57(6), 2262-2271. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c07936
Zhang, N., Sharma, B. P., & Khanna, M. (2023). Determining spatially varying profit-maximizing management practices for miscanthus and switchgrass production in the rainfed United States. GCB Bioenergy, 15(3), 271-282. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcbb.13021
Chen, X., Khanna, M., & Yang, L. (2022). The impacts of temperature on Chinese food processing firms*. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 66(2), 256-279. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8489.12469
Cornish, B., Miao, R., & Khanna, M. (2022). Impact of changes in Title II of the 2018 Farm Bill on the acreage and environmental benefits of Conservation Reserve Program. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 44(2), 1100-1122. https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13185