Showing 51 - 60 of 80 Items
Date: 2009-02-01
Creator: Erik Nelson, Guillermo Mendoza, James Regetz, Stephen Polasky, Heather, Tallis, D. Richard Cameron, Kai M.A. Chan, Gretchen C. Daily, Joshua Goldstein
Access: Open access
- Nature provides a wide range of benefits to people. There is increasing consensus about the importance of incorporating these "ecosystem services" into resource management decisions, but quantifying the levels and values of these services has proven difficult. We use a spatially explicit modeling tool, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), to predict changes in ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and commodity production levels. We apply InVEST to stakeholder-defined scenarios of land-use/land-cover change in the Willamette Basin, Oregon. We found that scenarios that received high scores for a variety of ecosystem services also had high scores for biodiversity, suggesting there is little tradeoff between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. Scenarios involving more development had higher commodity production values, but lower levels of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. However, including payments for carbon sequestration alleviates this tradeoff. Quantifying ecosystem services in a spatially explicit manner, and analyzing tradeoffs between them, can help to make natural resource decisions more effective, efficient, and defensible. © The Ecological Society of America.
Date: 2010-07-22
Creator: Erik J. Nelson, Gretchen C. Daily
Access: Open access
- Over the past few decades, a multi-disciplinary research community has documented the goods and services provided by ecosystems in specific sites scattered across the world. This research community has now begun to focus on creating methods and tools for mapping and valuing the ecosystem services produced on any landscape in the world. We describe some of these methods and tools and how they calculate and express ecosystem service provision and value on landscapes. We also describe methods for predicting landscape change. These predictions can be used by multi-ecosystem service models to assess potential changes and trade-offs in ecosystem service provision and values into the future. © 2010 Faculty of 1000 Ltd.

Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Summers Askew
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Madeleine Squibb
Access: Open access
- This study combines data from the 2010 Demographic and Health Survey and the Conflict Analysis Resource Center (CERAC) to examine the impact of conflict on maternal health service utilization and outcomes in Colombia. The primary results indicate a significant, negative relationship between conflict level and antenatal and postnatal care utilization. Conflict is insignificant in determining the use of professional assistance at delivery. Although rural women are, overall, less likely to access maternal health services, further analysis along rural-urban lines reveals that the negative effect of violence on prenatal and postnatal care is stronger among urban women. Secondary estimation of the occurrence of complications during or after delivery employs a Two-Stage Residuals Inclusion model to address potential endogeneity in service use. Estimated results show that conflict levels are insignificant, but that Indigenous women and women in lower wealth quintiles are significantly more likely to experience complications, even after controlling for service use. The conclusions of this paper suggest that Colombia’s universal healthcare system has been successful in reducing economic barriers to prenatal care and professional delivery, but that significant wealth-related inequalities remain in maternal health outcomes. Additionally, Indigenous and women with lower levels of education are less likely to access services and more likely to experience complications. The primary contribution of this paper is the inclusion of a conflict measure. The significant, negative impact on prenatal and postnatal care utilization, especially for urban women, warrants further study to better inform policy to increase service use and reduce maternal mortality and morbidity.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Silas Wuerth
Access: Open access
- Employs two tests for bubbles in the art market. First, a right-hand forward recursive augmented Dickey-Fuller test to identify explosive price movements. Second, a test for the statistical significance of hedonic regression price index coefficients after controlling for equity market performance. Finds strong evidence for a speculative bubble in the pre-Great Recession "Post-War & Contemporary" market. Evidence for this bubble diminishes but does not dissipate after accounting for the effect of failed sales on index returns.
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Jordan W Richmond
Access: Open access
- This study develops a controlled laboratory experiment to examine the effects of personal recognition on charitable giving. I find evidence that both the possibility of acquiring prestige and the desire to avoid shame motivate individuals to give in recognition situations. Furthermore, I show that the possibility of being recognized is more important than the distinguishing value of that recognition, suggesting that an offer of recognition has greater power to increase charitable contributions when a larger proportion of donors will be recognized.

- Restriction End Date: 2029-06-01
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Anh Nguyen
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2014-10-01
Creator: Erik Nelson, John C. Withey, Derric Pennington, Joshua J. Lawler
Access: Open access
- We determine the effect of the US Endangered Species Act’s Critical Habitat designation on land use change from 1992 to 2011. We find that the rate of change in developed land (constructed material) and agricultural land is not significantly affected by Critical Habitat designation. Therefore, Sections 7 and 9 of the Endangered Species Act do not appear to be more heavily applied in lands designated as Critical Habitat areas versus lands within listed species’ ranges, but without critical habitat designation. Further, there does not appear to be any extraordinary conservation activity in critical habitat areas; for example, environmental non-profits and land trusts do not appear to be concentrating activity in these areas. Before we conclude that the opportunity cost of Critical Habitat designation is negligible we need to examine the land management impacts of designation.
Date: 2019-01-01
Creator: Erik Nelson, Nicole Sadowsky
Access: Open access
- Since 2011, the private ride-hailing (RH) app companies Uber and Lyft have expanded into more and more US urban areas. We use a dynamic entry event study to examine the impact of Uber and Lyft's entry on public transportation (PT) use in the United States' largest urban areas. In most cases, entry into urban areas was staggered: Uber entered first, followed several months later by Lyft. We generally find that PT use increased in the representative urban area, all else equal, immediately following first RH app company entry. However, this spike in PT use largely disappeared following the entry of the second RH app company. Slightly different RH app company-PT use relationships emerge when we estimate the PT use model over various subsets of urban areas and PT modes.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: B. Zorina Khan
Access: Open access
- Social progress depends on the realization of inventive ideas, and economic history provides valuable lessons about creativity in technology and culture. The empirical study of over one hundred thousand innovative individuals who obtained patents, copyrights, and prizes, sheds light on the relationship between institutions, incentives, and transformative ideas and expression, over the past two centuries. The European growth model assumed useful knowledge was scarce, and top-down administered innovation systems offered rights and rewards to “exclusive” groups. By contrast, American policies regarded creativity as widely distributed in the general population, and further promoted “inclusive” market-oriented mechanisms that fostered diversity in ideas and outcomes. The evidence suggests that property rights in patents facilitated markets in ideas, and ensured that returns were aligned with productivity and market demand. Whereas, such administered systems as innovation prizes and publisher’s copyrights in the “creative industries” benefited the few rather than overall social welfare.