DOI: 10.5061/dryad.dbrv15f6z
title: Data from: The increasing benefits from ecosystems

description: Ecosystems provide important services and are becoming increasingly scarce
 relative to market goods. Substantial policy shifts are currently underway
 in the US and elsewhere to integrate the value of ecosystem services in
 investment appraisal and regulatory analysis. Yet, policy guidelines need
 to be improved by providing direction on how to account for the fact that
 benefits from ecosystem services increase over time as incomes grow and
 ecosystem services become scarcer. Building on economic theory and best
 available evidence, we propose a simple relative price change rule to
 adjust the benefits from future ecosystem services. Applying this rule
 will better enable governments to reflect the importance of scarce
 ecosystems for current and future generations in public decision-making.
 This is critical as conservation efforts have so far fallen short of their
 stated goals.
description: # Data from: The increasing benefits from ecosystems
 ## Description of the data
 and file structure The Supplementary Material describes the underlying
 theory and procedures. Here, we provide the data and code to reproduce the
 Figures and results mentioned in the Main and Supplementary Materials. The
 replication materials contain three types of files: (1) The Excel file
 [Calculation_Figure_1_A-D.xlsx] includes all calculations that underlie
 the main Figure 1, while the files [Calculation_Figure_S1.xls] and
 [Calculation_Figure_S1.xlsx] contain the respective calculations for
 Figures S1 and S2. (A) Excel file [Calculation_Figure_1_A-D.xlsx]: Rows
 1-5 in Columns A-I include the inputs to calculate relative price changes
 (RPC) in Columns B, D, F and H, rows 10 to 110, and the respective
 increases in the present value of ecosystem services relative to the no
 relative price change case (Columns C,E,G and I, rows 10 to 110), along
 different value for the income elasticity of WTP. This serves as inputs to
 Stata to build Figure 1 Panel A and C. Columns K to X contain the inputs
 to Stata to build Figure 1 Panel B and D. Columns K is the year, while L
 to P contain growth of indicators (GDP per capita as well as four
 environmental indicators). Columns Q to T report estimated future
 willingness to pay (WTP) estimates for the new default with an income
 elasticity of unity, and Columns U to X report estimated future
 willingness to pay (WTP) estimates for the old default with an income
 elasticity of zero. The additional sheets assemble this data to be copied
 into Stata. (B) Excel file [Calculation_Figure_S1.xls]: The sheet provides
 the same calculation of the RPC and the increase in present values, but
 now not along the income elasticity of WTP but along the discount rate
 (see Column A). The 2nd sheet again collects the data to be copied into
 Stata. (C) Excel file [Calculation_Figure_S2.xls]: The sheet provides the
 same calculation of the RPC and the increase in present values, but now
 not along the income elasticity of WTP or discount rate but along the time
 horizon of the analysis (see Column A). The 2nd sheet again collects the
 data to be copied into Stata. (2) The corresponding data is saved in the
 subfolder [Data] as .dta files to facilitate integration into Stata for
 plotting the graphs. (3) The Stata codes in the subfolder [Code] draw on
 these data files to produce Figures 1, S1 and S2. To reproduce the
 Figures, please set the paths to your local drives accordingly. ##
 Sharing/Access information The data on growth rates is based on an
 estimation by Drupp et al. (2023,
 ). ## Code/Software As mentioned
 above, the package includes six Stata codes to reproduces the four panels
 of the main Figure as well as the Figures S1 and S2. If you want to run
 these on your computer, you need to adjust the pathways/directories
 accordingly.