Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Daily Overview |
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Thematic Session: Economics of Biodiversity (Streaming) Location: B008 Session Chair: Yuanning Liang, Peking University | |
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Economic Values of Ecosystem Service: Evidence from Bees 1: Jinan University; 2: Peking University; 3: London School of Economics Ecosystem services are essential to economic activity, yet their social value is difficult to quantify since markets rarely internalize the externalities they generate. This paper provides causal evidence on the economic value of ecosystem services by studying bees, the primary pollinators in modern agriculture. Assembling comprehensive data on U.S. agriculture and bee colonies, we construct a county-by-year measure of local bee services that combines variation in regional bee supply, crop-specific pollination demand, and local crop structure, and link it to revealed local economic outcomes. To address endogeneity, we develop a novel instrumental-variables strategy that exploits the seasonal migratory behavior of commercial bees, using machine-learning methods subject to ecological constraints to trace exogenous colony shocks across space. Our IV estimates indicate that the economic value of an additional colony is approximately $5,271—an order of magnitude larger than the observed rental price. The implied aggregate value of U.S. bee colonies exceeds $14 billion annually, highlighting large unpriced benefits in ecosystem service provision and the potential gains from conservation and coordination policies. | |