The Price Elasticity of African Elephant Poaching
The objective of this paper is to provide an estimate of the elasticity of elephant poaching with respect to prices. Ivory being a storable commodity subjects its price to Hotelling’s no-arbitrage condition, hence allowing identification of the supply curve. The price of gold, one of many commod...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/358291518460602605/The-price-elasticity-of-African-elephant-poaching http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29369 |
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okr-10986-293692021-06-14T10:10:06Z The Price Elasticity of African Elephant Poaching Do, Quy-Toan Levchenko, Andrei A. Ma, Lin Blanc, Julian Dublin, Holly Milliken, Tom ELEPHANTS IVORY PRICE POACHING PRICE ELASTICITY STORAGE CONSERVATION The objective of this paper is to provide an estimate of the elasticity of elephant poaching with respect to prices. Ivory being a storable commodity subjects its price to Hotelling’s no-arbitrage condition, hence allowing identification of the supply curve. The price of gold, one of many commodities used as stores of value, is thus used as an instrument for ivory prices. The supply of illegal ivory is found to be price-inelastic with an elasticity of 0.4, with changes in consumer prices passing-through to prices faced by producers at a rate close to unity. Estimations based on a number of alternative estimation approaches all confirm the conclusion that supply is inelastic. The paper ends with a brief discussion on what such finding implies for elephant conservation policies. 2018-02-16T21:14:14Z 2018-02-16T21:14:14Z 2018-02 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/358291518460602605/The-price-elasticity-of-African-elephant-poaching http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29369 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8335 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Africa Sub-Saharan Africa |
| repository_type |
Digital Repository |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
Digital Repositories |
| building |
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
| collection |
World Bank |
| language |
English |
| topic |
ELEPHANTS IVORY PRICE POACHING PRICE ELASTICITY STORAGE CONSERVATION |
| spellingShingle |
ELEPHANTS IVORY PRICE POACHING PRICE ELASTICITY STORAGE CONSERVATION Do, Quy-Toan Levchenko, Andrei A. Ma, Lin Blanc, Julian Dublin, Holly Milliken, Tom The Price Elasticity of African Elephant Poaching |
| geographic_facet |
Africa Sub-Saharan Africa |
| relation |
Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8335 |
| description |
The objective of this paper is to provide an estimate of the
elasticity of elephant poaching with respect to prices. Ivory
being a storable commodity subjects its price to Hotelling’s
no-arbitrage condition, hence allowing identification of the
supply curve. The price of gold, one of many commodities
used as stores of value, is thus used as an instrument
for ivory prices. The supply of illegal ivory is found to be
price-inelastic with an elasticity of 0.4, with changes in consumer
prices passing-through to prices faced by producers at
a rate close to unity. Estimations based on a number of alternative
estimation approaches all confirm the conclusion that
supply is inelastic. The paper ends with a brief discussion on
what such finding implies for elephant conservation policies. |
| format |
Working Paper |
| author |
Do, Quy-Toan Levchenko, Andrei A. Ma, Lin Blanc, Julian Dublin, Holly Milliken, Tom |
| author_facet |
Do, Quy-Toan Levchenko, Andrei A. Ma, Lin Blanc, Julian Dublin, Holly Milliken, Tom |
| author_sort |
Do, Quy-Toan |
| title |
The Price Elasticity of African Elephant Poaching |
| title_short |
The Price Elasticity of African Elephant Poaching |
| title_full |
The Price Elasticity of African Elephant Poaching |
| title_fullStr |
The Price Elasticity of African Elephant Poaching |
| title_full_unstemmed |
The Price Elasticity of African Elephant Poaching |
| title_sort |
price elasticity of african elephant poaching |
| publisher |
World Bank, Washington, DC |
| publishDate |
2018 |
| url |
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/358291518460602605/The-price-elasticity-of-African-elephant-poaching http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29369 |
| _version_ |
1764469173360001024 |