Showing 31 - 40 of 84 Items
The distributional impact of a green payment policy for organic fruit
Date: 2019-02-01
Creator: Erik Nelson, John Fitzgerald, Nathan Tefft
Access: Open access
- Consumer spending on organic food products has grown rapidly. Some claim that organics have ecological, equity, and health advantages over conventional food and therefore should be subsidized. Here we explore the distributive impacts of an organic fruit subsidy that reduces the retail price of organic fruit in the US by 10 percent. We estimate the impact of the subsidy on organic fruit demand in a representative poor, middle income, and rich US household using three analytical methods; including two econometric and one machine learning. We do not find strong evidence of regressive redistribution due to our simulated organic fruit subsidy; the poor household’s relative reaction to the subsidy is not much different than the reaction at the other two households. However, the infra-marginal savings from the subsidy tend to be larger in richer households.
Implementing the Optimal Provision of Ecosystem Services
Date: 2013-08-01
Creator: Stephen Polasky, David Lewis, Andrew Plantinga, Erik Nelson
Access: Open access
- Many ecosystem services are public goods whose provision depends on the spatial pattern of land use. The pattern of land use is often determined by the decisions of multiple private landowners. Increasing the provision of ecosystem services, while beneficial for society as a whole, may be costly to private landowners. A regulator interested in providing incentives to landowners for increased provision of ecosystem services often lacks complete information on landowners’ costs. The combination of spatially-dependent benefits and asymmetric cost information means that the optimal provision of ecosystem services cannot be achieved using standard regulatory or payment for ecosystem services (PES) approaches. Here we show that an auction that pays a landowner for the increased value of ecosystem services generated by the landowner’s actions provides incentives for landowners to truthfully reveal cost information, and allows the regulator to implement the optimal provision of ecosystem services, even in the case with spatially-dependent benefits and asymmetric information.
Measuring the Relative Importance of Different Agricultural Inputs to Global and Regional Crop Yield Growth Since 1975
Date: 2016-09-01
Creator: Erik Nelson, Clare Bates Congdon
Access: Open access
- We identify the agricultural inputs that drove the growth in global and regional crop yields from 1975 to the mid-2000s. We find that improvements in agricultural technology, increased fertilizer use, and changes in crop mix around the world explained most of the gain in global crop yields, although impacts varied across the latitude gradient. Climate change over this time period caused yields to be only slightly lower than they would have been otherwise. In some cases cropland extensification had as much of a negative impact on global and regional yields as climate change. To maintain the momentum in yield growth across the globe 1) use of agricultural chemicals and investment in agricultural technology in the tropics must increase rapidly and 2) international trade in agricultural products must expand significantly.
Reference Points, Prospect Theory, and Momentum on the PGA Tour
Date: 2016-06-01
Creator: Daniel F. Stone, Jeremy Arkes
Access: Open access
- Pope and Schweitzer (2011) study predictions of prospect theory for the reference point of par on the current hole in professional golf. We study prospect-theory predictions of three other plausible reference points: par for recent holes, for the round, and for the tournament. A potentially competing force is momentum in quality of play, that is, the hot or cold hand. While prospect theory predicts negative serial correlation in better (worse)-than-average performance across holes, the hot (cold) hand implies the opposite. We find evidence that, for each of the reference points we study, when scores are better than par, hot-hand effects are dominated by prospect-theory effects. These effects can occur via two mechanisms: greater conservatism or less effort. We find evidence that the former (latter) dominates for scores closer to (further from) the reference point. We also find evidence of prospect theory effects (greater risk seeking) when scores are worse than par for the round in Round 1 and of cold-hand effects for scores worse than par for the tournament in Round 3. The magnitudes of some of the joint effects are comparable to those found by Pope and Schweitzer and other related papers. We conclude by discussing how, rather than compete, prospect-theory and cold-hand forces might also cause one another.
Evaluating the Return in Ecosystem Services from Investment in Public Land Acquisitions
Date: 2013-06-11
Creator: Kent Kovacs, Stephen Polasky, Erik Nelson, Bonnie L. Keeler, Derric, Pennington, Andrew J. Plantinga, Steven J. Taff
Access: Open access
- We evaluate the return on investment (ROI) from public land conservation in the state of Minnesota, USA. We use a spatially-explicit modeling tool, the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), to estimate how changes in land use and land cover (LULC), including public land acquisitions for conservation, influence the joint provision and value of multiple ecosystem services. We calculate the ROI of a public conservation acquisition as the ratio of the present value of ecosystem services generated by the conservation to the cost of the conservation. For the land scenarios analyzed, carbon sequestration services generated the greatest benefits followed by water quality improvements and recreation opportunities. We found ROI values ranged from 0.21 to 5.28 depending on assumptions about future land use change, service values, and discount rate. Our study suggests conservation is a good investment as long as investments are targeted to areas with low land costs and high service values. © 2013 Kovacs et al.
JUST A BIG MISUNDERSTANDING? BIAS AND BAYESIAN AFFECTIVE POLARIZATION
Date: 2020-02-01
Creator: Daniel F. Stone
Access: Open access
- I present a model of affective polarization—growth in hostility over time between two parties—via quasi-Bayesian inference. In the model, two agents repeatedly choose actions. Each choice is based on a balance of concerns for private interests and the social good. More weight is put on private interests when an agent's character is intrinsically more self-serving and when the other agent is believed to be more self-serving. Each agent Bayesian updates about the other's character, and dislikes the other more when she is perceived as more self-serving. I characterize the effects on growth in dislike of three biases: a prior bias against the other agent's character, the false consensus bias, and limited strategic thinking. Prior bias against the other's character remains constant or declines over time, and actions do not diverge. The other two biases cause actions to become more extreme over time and repeatedly be “worse” than expected, causing mutual growth in dislike, that is, affective polarization. The magnitude of dislike can become arbitrarily large—even when both players are arbitrarily “good” (unselfish). The results imply that seemingly irrelevant cognitive biases can be an important cause of the devolution of relationships, in politics and beyond, and that subtlety and unawareness of bias can be key factors driving the degree of polarization.
Mesurer l’identité : pourquoi les jeunes français se détournent du vin ?Measuring Identity: What’s Turning the Young French Away from Wine?
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Siyi (Jonathan) Li
Access: Open access
- We use a randomized discrete‑choice experiment with 381 French adults to investigate why France’s wine consumption decline is most pronounced among the young. The treatment group subjects were primed via a video about France’s viticultural heritage, which raises the probability of choosing French red wine over French amber beer by 14 percentage points for Generation X but lowers it by 15 points for Generation Z. Using observational data collected after the experiment, 2SLS estimates show that the decline of wine in France is primarily due to a weakened sense of “French wine identity.” The study provides the first causal evidence for the role of identity in consumption choices and cautions that heritage‑based marketing may backfire with younger cohorts, suggesting instead modernity‑ and sustainability‑oriented strategies for the wine sector.
Gracefully Navigating Industry Exit: Modeling Regional Climate Change-Driven Decline in Maine’s Lobster Fishery and the Urgent Need for Statewide Comprehensive Cost Data Access to this record is restricted to members of the Bowdoin community. Log in here to view.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Luisa Isabelle Louchheim
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Using landscape metrics to characterize towns along an urban-rural gradient
Date: 2021-10-01
Creator: Abigail Kaminski, Dana Marie Bauer, Kathleen P. Bell, Cynthia S. Loftin, Erik J., Nelson
Access: Open access
- Context: Urban-rural gradients are useful tools when examining the influence of human disturbances on ecological, social and coupled systems, yet the most commonly used gradient definitions are based on single broad measures such as housing density or percent forest cover that fail to capture landscape patterns important for conservation. Objectives: We present an approach to defining urban–rural gradients that integrates multiple landscape pattern metrics related to ecosystem processes important for natural resources and wildlife sustainability. Methods: We develop a set of land cover composition and configuration metrics and then use them as inputs to a cluster analysis process that, in addition to grouping towns with similar attributes, identifies exemplar towns for each group. We compare the outcome of the cluster-based urban-rural gradient typology to outcomes for four commonly-used rule-based typologies and discuss implications for resource management and conservation. Results: The resulting cluster-based typology defines five town types (urban, suburban, exurban, rural, and agricultural) and notably identifies a bifurcation along the gradient distinguishing among rural forested and agricultural towns. Landscape patterns (e.g., core and islet forests) influence where individual towns fall along the gradient. Designations of town type differ substantially among the five different typologies, particularly along the middle of the gradient. Conclusions: Understanding where a town occurs along the urban-rural gradient could aid local decision-makers in prioritizing and balancing between development and conservation scenarios. Variations in outcomes among the different urban-rural gradient typologies raise concerns that broad-measure classifications do not adequately account for important landscape patterns. We suggest future urban-rural gradient studies utilize more robust classification approaches.
Managing small natural features: A synthesis of economic issues and emergent opportunities
Date: 2017-07-01
Creator: Dana Marie Bauer, Kathleen P. Bell, Erik J. Nelson, Aram J.K. Calhoun
Access: Open access
- Small natural features (SNFs), landscape elements that influence species persistence and ecological functioning on a much larger scale than one would expect from their size, can also offer a greater rate of return on conservation investment compared to that of larger natural features or more broad-based conservation. However, their size and perceived lack of significance also makes them more vulnerable to threats and destruction. We examine the management of SNFs and conservation of the associated ecosystem services they generate from an economics perspective. Using the economic concept of market failure, we identify three key themes that explain prevailing threats to SNFs and characterize impediments to and opportunities for SNF management: (1) the degree to which benefits derived from the feature spillover, beyond the feature itself (spatially and temporally); (2) the availability and quality of information about the feature and those who most directly influence its management; and (3) the existence and enforcement of property rights and legal standing of the feature. We argue that the efficacy of alternative SNF management approaches is highly case dependent and relies on four key components: (1) the specific ecosystem services of interest; (2) the amount of redundancy of the SNF on the landscape and the level of connectivity required by the SNF in order to provide ecosystem services; (3) the particular market failures that need correcting and their scope and extent; and (4) the magnitude and distribution of management costs.