IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v93y2003i5p1597-1614.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Valuing Biodiversity from an Economic Perspective: A Unified Economic, Ecological, and Genetic Approach

Author

Listed:
  • William A. Brock
  • Anastasios Xepapadeas

Abstract

We develop a conceptual framework for valuing biodiversity from an economic perspective. We argue for a dynamic economic welfare measure of biodiversity that complements the literature on benefit-cost approaches and genetic distance/phylogenic tree approaches. Using a unified model of optimal economic management of an ecosystem under ecological and genetic constraints, we identify gains from management policies leading to a more diverse system, using the Bellman state valuation function of the problem. We show that a more diverse system could attain a higher value although the genetic distance of the species in the more diverse system could be almost zero.

Suggested Citation

  • William A. Brock & Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2003. "Valuing Biodiversity from an Economic Perspective: A Unified Economic, Ecological, and Genetic Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1597-1614, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:93:y:2003:i:5:p:1597-1614
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/000282803322655464
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/000282803322655464
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Solow Andrew & Polasky Stephen & Broadus James, 1993. "On the Measurement of Biological Diversity," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 60-68, January.
    2. repec:cup:macdyn:v:6:y:2002:i:1:p:19-39 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Montgomery, Claire A. & Pollak, Robert A. & Freemark, Kathryn & White, Denis, 1999. "Pricing Biodiversity," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-19, July.
    4. Terrance Hurley & Silvia Secchi & Bruce Babcock & Richard Hellmich, 2002. "Managing the Risk of European Corn Borer Resistance to Bt Corn," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 22(4), pages 537-558, August.
    5. Andrew Metrick & Martin L. Weitzman, 1998. "Conflicts and Choices in Biodiversity Preservation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 21-34, Summer.
    6. Martin L. Weitzman, 1976. "On the Welfare Significance of National Product in a Dynamic Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(1), pages 156-162.
    7. Terrance M. Hurley & Silvia Secchi & Bruce A. Babcock, 1999. "Managing the Risk of European Corn Borer Resistance to Transgenic Corn: An Assessment of Refuge Recommendations," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications 99-sr88, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    8. Klaus Nehring & Clemens Puppe, 2002. "A Theory of Diversity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(3), pages 1155-1198, May.
    9. Chuan-Zhong Li & Karl-Gustaf Löfgren & Martin Weitzman, 2001. "Harvesting versus Biodiversity: An Occam's Razor Version," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 18(4), pages 355-366, April.
    10. Stephen Polasky & Andrew Solow & James Broadus, 1993. "Searching for uncertain benefits and the conservation of biological diversity," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 3(2), pages 171-181, April.
    11. Simpson, R David & Sedjo, Roger A & Reid, John W, 1996. "Valuing Biodiversity for Use in Pharmaceutical Research," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(1), pages 163-185, February.
    12. Martin L. Weitzman, 1998. "The Noah's Ark Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(6), pages 1279-1298, November.
    13. Martin L. Weitzman, 1992. "On Diversity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 363-405.
    14. Martin L. Weitzman, 2000. "Economic Profitability Versus Ecological Entropy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(1), pages 237-263.
    15. Gardner M. Brown & Jason F. Shogren, 1998. "Economics of the Endangered Species Act," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 3-20, Summer.
    16. Amy Craft & R. Simpson, 2001. "The Value of Biodiversity in Pharmaceutical Research with Differentiated Products," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 18(1), pages 1-17, January.
    17. Brock, William & Xepapadeas, Anastasios, 2002. "Optimal Ecosystem Management when Species Compete for Limiting Resources," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 189-220, September.
    18. Heal, G., 1999. "Biodiversity as a Commodity," Papers 99-7, Columbia - Graduate School of Business.
    19. Dasgupta, Partha & Mäler, Karl-Göran, 2000. "Net national product, wealth, and social well-being," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 69-93, February.
    20. Polasky Stephen & Solow Andrew R., 1995. "On the Value of a Collection of Species," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 298-303, November.
    21. Curtis M. Lively & Mark F. Dybdahl, 2000. "Parasite adaptation to locally common host genotypes," Nature, Nature, vol. 405(6787), pages 679-681, June.
    22. Hurley, Terrance M. & Secchi, Silvia & Hellmich, Richard L., 1999. "Managing The Risk Of European Corn Borer Resistance To Transgenic Corn: An Assessment Of Controversial Refuge Recommendations," 1999 Annual meeting, August 8-11, Nashville, TN 21606, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    23. Graciela Chichilnisky & Geoffrey Heal, 1998. "Economic returns from the biosphere," Nature, Nature, vol. 391(6668), pages 629-630, February.
    24. Bernhard, Pierre, 2002. "Survey Of Linear Quadratic Robust Control," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 19-39, February.
    25. Martin L. Weitzman, 1993. "What to Preserve? An Application of Diversity Theory to Crane Conservation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(1), pages 157-183.
    26. John M. Hartwick, 2000. "National Accounting and Capital," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1885.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baumgartner, Stefan & Becker, Christian & Faber, Malte & Manstetten, Reiner, 2006. "Relative and absolute scarcity of nature. Assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(4), pages 487-498, October.
    2. Béné, C. & Doyen, L., 2008. "Contribution values of biodiversity to ecosystem performances: A viability perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1-2), pages 14-23, December.
    3. Eppink, Florian V. & van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., 2007. "Ecological theories and indicators in economic models of biodiversity loss and conservation: A critical review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 284-293, March.
    4. Juutinen, Artti, 2008. "Old-growth boreal forests: Worth protecting for biodiversity?," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 242-267, November.
    5. Tilman, David & Polasky, Stephen & Lehman, Clarence, 2005. "Diversity, productivity and temporal stability in the economies of humans and nature," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 405-426, May.
    6. Polasky, Stephen & Costello, Christopher & Solow, Andrew, 2005. "The Economics of Biodiversity," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 29, pages 1517-1560, Elsevier.
    7. Perry, Neil, 2010. "The ecological importance of species and the Noah's Ark problem," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 478-485, January.
    8. Andrew Metrick & Martin L. Weitzman, 1998. "Conflicts and Choices in Biodiversity Preservation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 21-34, Summer.
    9. Caracciolo, Francesco & Gotor, Elisabetta & Holloway, Garth J. & Watts, Jamie, 2008. "The Origin, Development And Structure Of Demand For Plant Genetic Resources. The Impact Of The In Trust Agreements To The CGIAR Collections Availability," 82nd Annual Conference, March 31 - April 2, 2008, Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, UK 36773, Agricultural Economics Society.
    10. Lynn Mainwaring, 2001. "Biodiversity, Biocomplexity, and the Economics of Genetic Dissimilarity," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 77(1), pages 79-83.
    11. G. Andrew Karolyi & John Tobin‐de la Puente, 2023. "Biodiversity finance: A call for research into financing nature," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 52(2), pages 231-251, June.
    12. Perry, Neil & Shankar, Sriram, 2017. "The State-contingent Approach to the Noah's Ark Problem," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 65-72.
    13. H. Spencer Banzhaf & James Boyd, 2012. "The Architecture and Measurement of an Ecosystem Services Index," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-32, March.
    14. Sarr, Mare & Goeschl, Timo & Swanson, Tim, 2008. "The value of conserving genetic resources for R&D: A survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 184-193, September.
    15. Swallow, Stephen K., 1996. "Economic Issues in Ecosystem Management: An Introduction and Overview," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 83-100, October.
    16. Gerber, Nicolas, 2009. "Measuring Biodiversity – an axiomatic evaluation of measures based on genetic data," Discussion Papers 51305, University of Bonn, Center for Development Research (ZEF).
    17. Catherine M. Chambers & Paul E. Chambers & John R. Crooker & John C. Whitehead, 2008. "Stochastic Dominance, Entropy and Biodiversity Management," Working Papers 08-08, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    18. Simpson, R. David & Craft, Amy, 1996. "The Social Value of Using Biodiversity in New Pharmaceutical Product Research," RFF Working Paper Series dp-96-33, Resources for the Future.
    19. Thomas Eichner & John Tschirhart, 2007. "Efficient ecosystem services and naturalness in an ecological/economic model," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 37(4), pages 733-755, August.
    20. Gerber, Nicolas, 2011. "Biodiversity measures based on species-level dissimilarities: A methodology for assessment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2275-2281.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:93:y:2003:i:5:p:1597-1614. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.