Natural disaster accounting bias and its equivalence across genetic resource stocks

Holloway, G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2058-4504 (2013) Natural disaster accounting bias and its equivalence across genetic resource stocks. Environmental Economics, 4 (3). pp. 8-19. ISSN 1998-6041

Abstract/Summary

Two sources of bias arise in conventional loss predictions in the wake of natural disasters. One source of bias stems from neglect of accounting for animal genetic resource loss. A second source of bias stems from failure to identify, in addition to the direct effects of such loss, the indirect effects arising from implications impacting animal-human interactions. We argue that, in some contexts, the magnitude of bias imputed by neglecting animal genetic resource stocks is substantial. We show, in addition, and contrary to popular belief, that the biases attributable to losses in distinct genetic resource stocks are very likely to be the same. We derive the formal equivalence across the distinct resource stocks by deriving an envelope result in a model that forms the mainstay of enquiry in subsistence farming and we validate the theory, empirically, in a World-Society-for-the-Protection-of-Animals application