IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeeman/v95y2019icp118-132.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Spatial aggregation and the value of natural capital

Author

Listed:
  • Addicott, Ethan T.
  • Fenichel, Eli P.

Abstract

Location matters for the value of capital assets. The value of changes in natural capital wealth can depend on whether natural capital asset prices are measured locally and then aggregated or whether average values are applied over aggregate representative areas. Spatial heterogeneity of resource characteristics and institutions impact approximations of the intertemporal welfare function and accounting price function because when spatial aggregation precedes valuation it implies greater arbitrage opportunities leading to more inelastic shadow (accounting) price functions than when valuation is done locally and then aggregated. Aggregation of observed values across varying resource and institutional characteristics can lead to omitted variables bias. We illustrate these results in the context of groundwater in the Kansas High Plains Aquifer and demonstrate that the accounting price function is less elastic when the accounting price is measured locally. Failure to measure locally and then aggregate could lead to undervaluing scarce resources and overvaluing plentiful ones, which biases wealth accounts in favor of passing the non-declining wealth sustainability test.

Suggested Citation

  • Addicott, Ethan T. & Fenichel, Eli P., 2019. "Spatial aggregation and the value of natural capital," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 118-132.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:95:y:2019:i:c:p:118-132
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2019.03.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069618302468
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jeem.2019.03.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Craig A. Bond, 2017. "Valuing Coastal Natural Capital in a Bioeconomic Framework," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(02), pages 1-26, April.
    2. Kenneth Arrow & Partha Dasgupta & Lawrence Goulder & Gretchen Daily & Paul Ehrlich & Geoffrey Heal & Simon Levin & Karl-Göran Mäler & Stephen Schneider & David Starrett & Brian Walker, 2004. "Are We Consuming Too Much?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 147-172, Summer.
    3. Kirk Hamilton & John Hartwick, 2014. "Wealth and sustainability," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 30(1), pages 170-187.
    4. Briant, A. & Combes, P.-P. & Lafourcade, M., 2010. "Dots to boxes: Do the size and shape of spatial units jeopardize economic geography estimations?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 287-302, May.
    5. Arrow, Kenneth J. & Dasgupta, Partha & Goulder, Lawrence H. & Mumford, Kevin J. & Oleson, Kirsten, 2012. "Sustainability and the measurement of wealth," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 317-353, June.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2002. "Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1231-1294.
    7. Dale Whittington & Duncan MacRae, 1986. "The issue of standing in cost-benefit analysis," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 5(4), pages 665-682.
    8. Pfeiffer, Lisa & Lin, C.-Y. Cynthia, 2010. "The Effect of Irrigation Technology on Groundwater Use," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 25(3), pages 1-6.
    9. Douglass C. North, 1991. "Institutions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 97-112, Winter.
    10. Dasgupta, Partha & Mã„Ler, Karl-Gã–Ran, 2000. "Net national product, wealth, and social well-being," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 69-93, February.
    11. Nick Hanley & Louis Dupuy & Eoin McLaughlin, 2015. "Genuine Savings And Sustainability," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 779-806, September.
    12. Fleurbaey, Marc & Blanchet, Didier, 2013. "Beyond GDP: Measuring Welfare and Assessing Sustainability," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199767199.
    13. Pfeiffer, Lisa & Lin, C.-Y. Cynthia, 2012. "Groundwater pumping and spatial externalities in agriculture," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 16-30.
    14. Kirk Hamilton & Esther Naikal, 2014. "Comprehensive wealth accounting and sustainable development," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 2, pages 25-40, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. V. Kerry Smith, 1993. "Nonmarket Valuation of Environmental Resources: An Interpretive Appraisal," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 69(1), pages 1-26.
    16. Kirk Hamilton & Giovanni Ruta, 2009. "Wealth Accounting, Exhaustible Resources and Social Welfare," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 42(1), pages 53-64, January.
    17. Rosegrant, Mark W. & Binswanger, Hans P., 1994. "Markets in tradable water rights: Potential for efficiency gains in developing country water resource allocation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(11), pages 1613-1625, November.
    18. Arrow, Kenneth J. & Dasgupta, Partha & Goulder, Lawrence H. & Mumford, Kevin J. & Oleson, Kirsten, 2013. "Sustainability and the measurement of wealth: further reflections," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 504-516, August.
    19. Sloggett, Gordon & Dickason, Clifford, 1986. "Ground-Water Mining in the United States," Agricultural Economic Reports 308008, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    20. Kevin J. Boyle & Nicolai V. Kuminoff & Christopher F. Parmeter & Jaren C. Pope, 2010. "The Benefit-Transfer Challenges," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 161-182, October.
    21. Eli P. Fenichel & Joshua K. Abbott, 2014. "Natural Capital: From Metaphor to Measurement," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 1-27.
    22. John B. Loomis, 2000. "Vertically Summing Public Good Demand Curves: An Empirical Comparison of Economic versus Political Jurisdictions," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 76(2), pages 312-321.
    23. Solow, Robert, 1993. "An almost practical step toward sustainability," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 162-172, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ethan T. Addicott, 2024. "The Value and Configuration of Coastal Natural Capital," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Environmental Public Goods: A National Accounts Perspective, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Yukiko Hashida & Eli P. Fenichel, 2022. "Valuing natural capital when management is dominated by periods of inaction," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 104(2), pages 791-811, March.
    3. Sampson, Gabriel S. & Hendricks, Nathan P. & Taylor, Mykel R., 2019. "Land market valuation of groundwater," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    4. Robert J. Johnston & Kevin J. Boyle & Maria L. Loureiro & Ståle Navrud & John Rolfe, 2021. "Guidance to Enhance the Validity and Credibility of Environmental Benefit Transfers," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 79(3), pages 575-624, July.
    5. Rintaro Yamaguchi, 2021. "Genuine Savings and Sustainability with Resource Diffusion," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 80(2), pages 451-471, October.
    6. Shew, Aaron M. & Nalley, Lawton L. & Durand-Morat, Alvaro & Meredith, Kylie & Parajuli, Ranjan & Thoma, Greg & Henry, Christopher G., 2021. "Holistically valuing public investments in agricultural water conservation," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 252(C).
    7. Manning, Dale T. & Rad, Mani Rouhi & Suter, Jordan F. & Goemans, Christopher & Xiang, Zaichen & Bailey, Ryan, 2020. "Non-market valuation in integrated assessment modeling: The benefits of water right retirement," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).

    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. Eli P Fenichel & Yukiko Hashida, 2019. "Choices and the value of natural capital," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 35(1), pages 120-137.
    2. Yamaguchi, Rintaro, 2020. "Available capital, utilized capital, and shadow prices in inclusive wealth accounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    3. Ben Groom & Zachary Turk, 2021. "Reflections on the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 79(1), pages 1-23, May.
    4. Geir B. Asheim & Rintaro Yamaguchi, 2023. "Comprehensive National Accounting for Carbon Emissions," CESifo Working Paper Series 10562, CESifo.
    5. Craig A. Bond, 2017. "Valuing Coastal Natural Capital in a Bioeconomic Framework," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(02), pages 1-26, April.
    6. Kvamsdal, Sturla F. & Sandal, Leif K. & Poudel, Diwakar, 2020. "Ecosystem wealth in the Barents Sea," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    7. McGrath, Luke & Hynes, Stephen & McHale, John, 2019. "Augmenting the World Bank's estimates: Ireland's genuine savings through boom and bust," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Luke McGrath & Stephen Hynes & John McHale, 2020. "Linking Sustainable Development Assessment in Ireland and the European Union with Economic Theory," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 51(2), pages 327-355.
    9. Shunsuke Managi & Shuning Chen & Pushpam Kumar & Partha Dasgupta, 2024. "Sustainable matrix beyond GDP: investment for inclusive growth," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-10, December.
    10. Sugiawan, Yogi & Kurniawan, Robi & Managi, Shunsuke, 2019. "Are carbon dioxide emission reductions compatible with sustainable well-being?," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 242(C), pages 1-11.
    11. Roman, Philippe & Thiry, Géraldine, 2016. "The inclusive wealth index. A critical appraisal," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 185-192.
    12. Yamaguchi, Rintaro & Managi, Shunsuke, 2019. "Backward- and Forward-looking Shadow Prices in Inclusive Wealth Accounting: An Example of Renewable Energy Capital," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 337-349.
    13. Koji Tokimatsu & Louis Dupuy & Nick Hanley, 2019. "Using Genuine Savings for Climate Policy Evaluation with an Integrated Assessment Model," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(1), pages 281-307, January.
    14. Matthias Blum & Eoin McLaughlin & Nick Hanley, 2019. "Accounting for Sustainable Development over the Long‐Run: Lessons from Germany," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(4), pages 410-446, November.
    15. Hoff, Jens V. & Rasmussen, Martin M.B. & Sørensen, Peter Birch, 2021. "Barriers and opportunities in developing and implementing a Green GDP," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    16. Nick Hanley & Louis Dupuy & Eoin McLaughlin, 2015. "Genuine Savings And Sustainability," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 779-806, September.
    17. Fleurbaey, Marc, 2015. "On sustainability and social welfare," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 34-53.
    18. Alan Randall, 2020. "On Intergenerational Commitment, Weak Sustainability, and Safety," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(13), pages 1-18, July.
    19. Kristen Cooper & Mark Fabian & Christian Krekel, 2023. "New approaches to measuring welfare," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(2), pages 123-135, June.
    20. Rintaro Yamaguchi & Masayuki Sato & Kazuhiro Ueta, 2016. "Measuring Regional Wealth and Assessing Sustainable Development: An Application to a Disaster-Torn Region in Japan," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 365-389, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Green accounting; Inclusive wealth; Genuine savings; Sustainability; Groundwater;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth
    • R32 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Other Spatial Production and Pricing Analysis

    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:eee:jeeman:v:95:y:2019:i:c:p:118-132. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622870 .

    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.