Quasi-experimental methods increasingly are used to evaluate the impacts of conservation interventions by generating credible estimates of counterfactual baselines. These methods generally require large samples for statistical comparisons, presenting a challenge for evaluating innovative policies implemented within a few pioneering jurisdictions. Single jurisdictions often are studied using comparative methods, which rely on analysts’ selection of best case comparisons. The synthetic control method (SCM) offers one systematic and transparent way to select cases for comparison, from a sizeable pool, by focusing upon similarity in outcomes before the intervention. We explain SCM, then apply it to one local initiative to limit deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The municipality of Paragominas launched a multi-pronged local initiative in 2008 to maintain low deforestation while restoring economic production. This was a response to having been placed, due to high deforestation, on a federal “blacklist” that increased enforcement of forest regulations and restricted access to credit and output markets. The local initiative included mapping and monitoring of rural land plus promotion of economic alternatives compatible with low deforestation. The key motivation for the program may have been to reduce the costs of blacklisting. However its stated purpose was to limit deforestation, and thus we apply SCM to estimate what deforestation would have been in a (counterfactual) scenario of no local initiative. We obtain a plausible estimate, in that deforestation patterns before the intervention were similar in Paragominas and the synthetic control, which suggests that after several years, the initiative did lower deforestation (significantly below the synthetic control in 2012). This demonstrates that SCM can yield helpful land-use counterfactuals for single units, with opportunities to integrate local and expert knowledge and to test innovations and permutations on policies that are implemented in just a few locations.

Coastal hypoxia (dissolved oxygen ≤ 2 mg/L) is a growing problem worldwide that threatens marine ecosystem services, but little is known about economic effects on fisheries. Here, we provide evidence that hypoxia causes economic impacts on a major fishery. Ecological studies of hypoxia and marine fauna suggest multiple mechanisms through which hypoxia can skew a population's size distribution toward smaller individuals. These mechanisms produce sharp predictions about changes in seafood markets. Hypoxia is hypothesized to decrease the quantity of large shrimp relative to small shrimp and increase the price of large shrimp relative to small shrimp. We test these hypotheses using time series of size-based prices. Naive quantitybased models using treatment/control comparisons in hypoxic and nonhypoxic areas produce null results, but we find strong evidence of the hypothesized effects in the relative prices: Hypoxia increases the relative price of large shrimp compared with small shrimp. The effects of fuel prices provide supporting evidence. Empirical models of fishing effort and bioeconomic simulations explain why quantifying effects of hypoxia on fisheries using quantity data has been inconclusive. Specifically, spatial-dynamic feedbacks across the natural system (the fish stock) and human system (the mobile fishing fleet) confound "treated" and "control" areas. Consequently, analyses of price data, which rely on a market counterfactual, are able to reveal effects of the ecological disturbance that are obscured in quantity data. Our results are an important step toward quantifying the economic value of reduced upstream nutrient loading in the Mississippi Basin and are broadly applicable to other coupled human-natural systems.hypoxia | fisheries | coupled human-natural systems | bioeconomics | spatial dynamics F ertilizer use in coastal watersheds and agriculture intensification contribute to a growing incidence of coastal ecological disturbances (1-4). Of particular concern is coastal hypoxia [dissolved oxygen (DO) ≤ 2 mg/L] and potential impacts on marine fauna (1-4). The Western Hemisphere's largest area of seasonal hypoxia is in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM; >20,000 km 2 ) and overlaps with what was once the highest value fishery in the United States (brown shrimp) (www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/commercial-fisheries/index) (5-7). Because controlling nutrient runoff upstream is costly, identifying and quantifying economic benefits downstream, including benefits to commercial fisheries, are essential for policy analysis (www.st. nmfs.noaa.gov/commercial-fisheries/index) (8-10). Although studies demonstrate ecological effects of hypoxia, economic consequences have not been established in this fishery.GoM brown shrimp (Farfantepenaeus aztecus) provide a unique opportunity to study the economic effects of hypoxia. First, the fishery is concentrated in regions of the GoM that become hypoxic seasonally (7) (SI Appendix, Figs. S1 and S2). Second, the temporal dynamics of brown shrimp and hypoxia match. Within season, harvest and hy...

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This paper assesses the role of visibility as a channel for social influence in solar panel adoption.