Professional Information

Gerald C Nelson

A.B., Economics, Department of Economics, Stanford University
A.M., Economics, Department of Economics, Stanford University
Ph.D., Applied Economics, Food Research Institute, Stanford University

Some of my current research activities are

Economic spatial analysis

This research uses spatially explicit data such as satellite images and other geographic data in econometric models to identify determinants of existing land use. These techniques also make it possible to simulate location-specific effects of policy changes on land use and consequent environmental effects. The focus is on developing countries where land use data are scarce and expensive to collect. We're currently assembling a high performance cluster to be able to handle larger data sets more easily.

The Value of Remotely Sensed Data

Because of my long-standing efforts to use remotely sensed data in economic models, I have been asked to cooperate with USDA in a study of whether and how landsat data have generated social benefits.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment project, a major United Nations-supported project to  “… map the health of our planet, and so fill important gaps in the knowledge that we need to preserve it,” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Economics of GMOs in agriculture

I finished an edited book (published by Academic Press) on this topic in 2001. It combines in-depth economic analysis of the three most widely-grown GM crops with 12 "perspective" chapters from authors with widely varying views. Click here for a review in Nature Biotech.  David Bullock and I used a spatial data set of soybean cropping practices and weed problems to estimate the effect of GM soybean adoption on volume and toxicity of herbicide application.