Erik Jeremy Nelson

Bowdoin College · Department of Economics

Trees provide critical contributions to human well-being. They sequester and store greenhouse gasses, filter air pollutants, provide wood, food, and other products, among other benefits. These benefits are threatened by climate change, fires, pests and pathogens. To quantify the current value of the flow of ecosystem services from U.S. trees, and t...

We use differences-in-differences (DD) estimators to measure the impact that Endangered Species Act (ESA)’s Critical Habitat (CH) rule had on developed and undeveloped parcel prices throughout the US between 2000 and 2019. In a national-level analysis we found that, on average, the price of parcels “treated” with CH were not statistically different...

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. Objective...

We use large dataset on US lakes from 17 states to estimate the relationship between summertime visits to lakes as proxied by social media use and the lakes' water quality, amenities, and surrounding landscape features and socioeconomic conditions. Prior to estimating these relationships we worked on 1) selecting a parsimonious set of explanatory v...

Glaeser et al. (2008) argue that the relative distribution of poor and rich households (HHs) in American cities is "strongly" explained by the spatial location of the cities' public transportation (PT) networks. Among their claims: 1) The broad distribution of poor and rich HHs in the typical American city is consistent with a basic monocentric cit...

Trees provide critical contributions to human well-being. They sequester and store greenhouse gasses, filter air pollutants, and provide wood, food, and other products, among other benefits. However, global change threatens these benefits. To quantify the monetary value of US trees and the threats they face, we combine macroevolutionary and economi...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211199.].

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...

Lorenz curves of organic fruit expenditures across three-person households by Nielsen Scantrack, 2011 through 2013 (December, 2013 $). The dark line in each plot is the actual cumulative household income-household expenditure curve and the lighter line is the 45-degree line. The dashed vertical lines indicate the approximate break point between the...

Predicted unconditional and conditional monthly purchase elasticities given a 10% organic fruit price subsidy. Under the subsidy plan all organic fruit prices are 90% of observed 2011–2013 means. Reactions are calculated for a representative lower, middle, and upper income class household. In each plotted-tuple of three points the middle point is t...

Predicted unconditional and conditional monthly expenditure elasticities given a 10% organic fruit price subsidy. Under the subsidy plan all organic fruit prices are 90% of observed 2011–2013 means. Reactions are calculated for a representative lower, middle, and upper income class household. In each plotted-tuple of three points the middle point i...

Mean household values for each household income class used to predict conditional demand for each fruit with the econometric estimation methods (separate equations and LinQuad estimation methods). All monetary values are in December, 2013 $. (DOCX)

The average expected household monthly consumption of organic fruit i across all household-months km∈z where eikm > 0 (i.e., conditional demand) when each km∈z’s expectation is not weighted and is weighted with each km∈z’s projection factor. (DOCX)

Net return to organic farming versus conventional farming. (DOCX)

Lorenz curves of conventional fruit expenditures across three-person households Nielsen Scantrack markets, 2011 through 2013 (December, 2013 $). The dark line in each plot is the actual cumulative household income-household expenditure curve and the lighter line is the 45-degree line. All household expenditures in year y are inflated by households’...

Ounces per fruit item. (DOCX)

Average organic fruit price by US region and year (December, 2013 $ per ounce). This data only includes fruit purchased with a Universal Product Code (UPC). Projection factors are used to extrapolate panel level results to national estimates. (DOCX)

The frequency with which a variable’s estimated coefficient is non-zero across 101 estimates of the LASSO model’s selection equation. This table indicates the fraction of 101 LASSO iterations where a variable’s estimated coefficient was non-zero in the selection stage (Eq 9) of the organic fruit consumption model. ‘Dark green indicates that the var...

The average expected household monthly consumption of organic fruit i across all household-months km∈z (i.e., unconditional demand) when each km∈z’s expectation is not weighted and is weighted with each km∈z’s projection factor. (DOCX)

Organic fruit demand estimation methods. (DOCX)

Lorenz curves of conventional fruit expenditures across two-person households Nielsen Scantrack markets, 2011 through 2013 (December, 2013 $). The dark line in each plot is the actual cumulative household income-household expenditure curve and the lighter line is the 45-degree line. All household expenditures in year t are inflated by households’ y...

Determining a household’s income class. (DOCX)

Data manipulation. (DOCX)

Real organic expenditures by fruit variety across US households by year (December, 2013 $). Projection factors are used to extrapolate survey level results to national estimates. ‘Other’ expenditure is the sum of expenditures on blackberries, grapes, grapefruit, lemons, raspberries, and miscellaneous. (DOCX)

Mean household values for each household income class used to predict unconditional demand for each fruit with the econometric estimation methods (separate equations and LinQuad estimation methods). All monetary values are in December, 2013 $. (DOCX)

Mean household values across each household income class from data used with LASSO estimation method. All monetary values are in December, 2013 $. (DOCX)

The frequency with which a variable’s estimated coefficient is non-zero across 101 estimates of the LASSO model’s quantity equation. This table indicates the fraction of 101 LASSO iterations where a variable’s estimated coefficient was non-zero in the quantity stage (Eq 10) of the organic fruit consumption model. ‘Dark green indicates that the vari...

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) are stakeholder-derived principles with measurable and enforceable criteria to promote sustainable production outcomes. While institutional commitments to use VSS to meet sustainable procurement policies have grown rapidly over the past decade, we still have relatively little understanding of the (i) direct...

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,...

Improving water quality and other ecosystem services in agriculturally dominated watersheds is an important policy objective in many regions of the world. A major challenge is overcoming the associated costs to agricultural producers. We integrate spatially-explicit models of ecosystem processes with agricultural commodity production models to anal...

We estimate US household monthly elasticities of demand for some of the more popular organic fruits. To our knowledge, this is the first US-wide, multi-year analysis of price and income elasticities for various organic fruits. We calculate elasticities of demand for low-income, middle class, and rich income bracket households using three estimation...

The citation for the peer-reviewed version of this working paper is, Nelson, E. and N. Sadowsky. 2019. Estimating the Impact of Ride-Hailing App Company Entry on Public Transportation Use in Major US Urban Areas. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 19(1). DOI: 10.1515/bejeap-2018-0151.

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 perceiv...

Background: We identify the agricultural inputs that drove the growth in global and regional crop yields from 1975 to the mid-2000s. Methods: We compare and contrast the inputs that drove yield change as identified by econometrically estimated yield functions and decision trees that use yield change as the class attribute. Results: We find that imp...

The US Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulates what landowners, land managers, and industry can do on lands occupied by listed species. The ESA does this in part by requiring the designation of habitat within each listed species’ range considered critical to their recovery. Critics have argued that critical habitat (CH) designation creates significa...

Nascent US carbon markets reward farmers for reforesting agricultural land, with consequent ecological co-benefits. We use a dynamic optimization model to determine the likelihood of an orchard farmer in northern California converting to forest under 90 plausible future scenarios. We find reforestation to be a highly unlikely outcome, occurring onl...

Increasing trade between countries and gains in income have given consumers around the world access to a richer and more diverse set of commercial plant products (i.e., foods and fibers produced by farmers). According to the economic theory of comparative advantage, countries open to trade will be able to consume more – in terms of volume and diver...

Percentage changes in trade openness and real GDP per capita by country between 1992–1994 and 2008–2010. The initial data point for each country (N = 141) is given by their 1992–1994 trade openness and real GDP per capita annual averages. The terminal data point for each country is given by their 2008–2010 trade openness and real GDP per capita ann...

Additional Materials and Methods. (DOCX)

Estimates of models (2) and (3). (DOCX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

The p and c vectors used in the text. (XLSX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

Dataset used to estimate model (2) (all plants). (XLSX)

Dataset used to estimate model (3) (all plants). (XLSX)

Estimates of model (2) with contemporaneous and once and twice lagged changes in independent variables. We present six estimates of model (2) with dependent variables (defined across all plants) in the first column and contemporaneous change and once and twice lagged (L.1 and L.2, respectively) independent variables in the remaining columns where g...

Estimates of model (3) with contemporaneous and once and twice lagged changes in independent variables. We present six estimates of model (3) with dependent variables (defined across all plants) in the first column and contemporaneous change and once and twice lagged (L.1 and L.2) independent variables in the remaining columns where g indicates ann...

Model (2)’s contemporaneous marginal effects at various latitudes for all plants. The graphed contemporaneous income per capita marginal effects are equal to estimated γ1+γ2|L| and contemporaneous trade openness marginal effects are equal to estimated γ3+γ4|L| for |L| = 5, 25, 45, and 65 degrees of latitude. All marginal effects are multiplied by 1...

Sensitivity analysis of weighted mean trends in zonal consumption diversity and richness. When we calculated cjkt for each j, k, and t combination, as measured by Mg, we had to translate all processed food import and export Mg values into their constituent crop Mg using FAOStat conversion rates. For the results presented in the main text we assume...

Country-level PSV, SR, and E data used in the text (food plants only). (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

Estimates of model (2) with contemporaneous and once lagged changes in independent variables. We present six estimates of model (2) with dependent variables (defined across all plants) in the first column and contemporaneous change and once lagged (L.1) independent variables in the remaining columns where g indicates annual change in logged country...

Estimates of model (3) with contemporaneous and once lagged changes in independent variables. We present six estimates of model (3) with dependent variables (defined across all plants) in the first column and contemporaneous change and once lagged (L.1) independent variables in the remaining columns where g indicates annual change in logged country...

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

One of the 10 alternative c vectors (consumption PSV, SR, and E derived from these data are graphed in S3 Fig). (XLSX)

Country-level PSV, SR, and E data used in the text (all commodity plants). (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)

Country-level consumption PSV, SR, and E data generated with one of the 10 alternative c vectors. (XLSX)