We discuss comparative static partial equilibrium approaches for large-scale monetary valuations of animalmediated crop pollination. These approaches rely upon reported crop production values, own-price elasticities of demand and experimentally found dependence ratios that express crop-specific yield shares due to pollinators. We dismiss the established long-term approach given the difficulty of anticipating the adaptation of the bioeconomic system to changes of pollinator abundance. Instead, we suggest another more parsimonious method, which assesses the short-term welfare effects following a sudden change in pollinator abundance. Using 2016-2018 data on agricultural production, we estimate the worldwide welfare effects due to a pollinator collapse for a range of plausible own-price elasticities, both from short-term and long-term perspectives. For the former we also simulate a global recovery scenario. Depending on the overall price elasticity assumed, the short-term effects of a total pollinator loss lie between 1 and 2 % of global GDP. We also apply the different valuation approaches to more detailed German 2006-2016 crop production data, where we account for crop-specific demand. As the reported dependence ratios vary in wide ranges, we rely upon stochastic simulations to obtain likely distributions of the German welfare effects
Revisiting the economic valuation of agricultural losses due to large-scale changes in pollinator populations
Year: 2002
