• Llerena, P. D., Avila-Santamaría, J. J., Gabela, M. v., Purca, S., Mena, C. F., & Cárdenas, S. A. (2025). Assessing economic losses in artisanal fisheries from marine plastic pollution in coastal Ecuador and Peru. Marine Policy, 173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106553

This study quantifies the economic losses that artisanal fisheries of coastal Ecuador and Peru incur due to marine plastic debris incidents. This study stands as the pioneering effort of its kind within the Latin American region. We surveyed 1349 artisanal fishermen and found that the annual probability of encountering plastic debris was 49.7 % in Ecuador and 53.4 % in Peru for the 2021–2022 period. Among those encountering debris, 49.7 % of Ecuadorian fishermen and 34.1 % of Peruvian fishermen reported economic losses. For the two years under the study, the average loss per fisherman was US$569.01 in Ecuador and US$669.39 in Peru, accounting for 0.84 % of Ecuador's and 0.71 % of Peru's fishing GDP for the years 2021–2022. Econometric analysis shows a statically significant negative impact of plastic debris on fishing income, and a binary well-being variable measure for Ecuador. Moreover, we found that fishermen facing plastic debris have a higher probability of making income below the minimum wage for Ecuador and the pooled data.

• Mancero-Castillo, D., Garcia, Y., Aguirre-Munizaga, M., Ponce de Leon, D., Portalanza, D., & Avila-Santamaria, J. (2024). Dynamic perspectives into tropical fruit production: a review of modeling techniques. Frontiers in Agronomy, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fagro.2024.1482893

Modeling the intricate interactions between fruit trees, their environments, soils, and economic factors continues to be a significant challenge in agricultural research globally, requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Despite advances in agricultural technology and algorithms, significant knowledge gaps persist in understanding and modeling these interactions. This review explores basic concepts related to modeling for tropical fruit production. It explains modeling development from sensor technologies, image analysis, databases, and algorithms for decision support systems while considering climate changes or edaphoclimatic limitations. We report the current fruit modeling tendencies showing a significant increase in publications on these topics starting in 2021, driven by the need for sustainable solutions and access to large agricultural databases. This study emphasizes inherent challenges in tropical fruit modeling, such as fruit tree cycles, costly and time-consuming experimentation, and the lack of standardized data. These limitations are evident in tropical fruit, where few models have been reported or validated for cocoa, avocado, durian, dragonfruit, banana, mango, or passion fruit. This study analyzes the classification of the algorithms related to tropical fruit into three main categories: supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning, each with specific applications in agricultural management optimization. Crop classification and yield prediction use supervised models like neural networks and decision trees. Unsupervised models, like K-Means clustering, allow pattern identification without prior labels, which is useful for area segmentation and pest detection. Automation of irrigation and fertilization systems employs reinforcement learning algorithms to maximize efficiency. This multidisciplinary review discusses recent approaches to 1) Modeling Soil health and plant-soil interaction, 2) Yield prediction in tropical fruit orchards, 3) Integrating meteorological models for enhanced tropical fruit production, and 4) Economics of tropical fruit business through modeling. Furthermore, this review illustrates the complexity and multidisciplinary research on models for tropical fruit and platforms using agricultural models. Further opportunities to advance fruit modeling frameworks are indicated, requiring technical knowledge about the fruit crop requirements with user-friendly platforms to collect and access fruit tree data and site-specific agroecological conditions.

• M. Fikru, Jorge J. Avila-Santamaría, Rafeal Soria, Annaleese Logan, and Pedro Romero. 2024. “Evaluating ESG Risk of Mining Companies: What are Lessons for Ecuador’s Developing Mining Sector?” Resources Policy 94, 105133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2024.105133 

The growing interest of international mining companies in Ecuador has raised concerns about how these companies will manage environmental and social risks, particularly in Indigenous communities and fragile ecosystems. This study uses Sustainalytics' ESG Risk Ratings to examine variations of ratings with respect to country of origin and firm size. Our analysis suggests that OECD-based mining companies with operations in multiple countries and those with a larger workforce tend to have fewer unmanaged ESG risks compared to others. However, the analysis highlights that these relationships are non-linear and heterogenous potentially moderated by a variety of factors that require a sector and country-specific analysis. As more international companies bid for Ecuador's untapped mineral resources, more studies are needed to inform policymakers on how to design a mechanism to differentiate companies already facing higher risks or having a large amount of unmanaged ESG risk. More research is also needed to identify and design strategies to effectively communicate with local communities and investors and inform them of the extent to which mining companies are managing ESG risks.

• Ortiz, Cristhian A., Jorge J. Avila-Santamaría, and Adan L. Martinez-Cruz. 2023. “Dairy farmers’ willingness to adopt cleaner production practices for water conservation: A discrete choice experiment in Mejia, Ecuador.” Agricultural Water Management 278 (2023): 108168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2023.108168

Worldwide, farming practices directly impact the quality and quantity of both underground and surface water resources. In Mejia, the leading milk-producing region of Ecuador, the adoption rate of conservation practices among farmers is low despite price incentives established by the Agricultural Ministry. Our discrete choice experiment documents stated preferences for water conservation practices of Mejia’s dairy farmers by facing respondents to alternatives described in terms of water-efficient technologies, management of manure and solid waste, and training to resolve conflicts over water use. Estimates derived from our preferred random parameter logit specification imply that the average willingness to pay (WTP) for a solid rain irrigation system is US$147 ha-1; and US$212 ha-1 for training to resolve conflicts. In addition, we report heterogeneity in WTP estimates. These findings can assist in the resolution of current issues in Mejia, including inefficient water irrigation and weak water governance system. Based on our results and the context of our study area, we suggest, first, the adoption of a cost-sharing scheme (given that the WTP for these practices does not cover their implementation cost), and second, the participation of academic institutions to help these water users resolve conflicts, establish their own rules, and improve water governance.

• Málaga, J., J.J. Avila-Santamaría, and C.E. Carpio. 2019. "The Andean Region: An Important and Growing U.S. Agricultural Trade Partner." Choices. 3rd Quarter 2019•34(3). https://www.jstor.org/stable/26964936 

The United States may be facing a growing surge in fruit and vegetable imports and other products from the Andean region, almost certainly from Chile and Peru, but also likely from Colombia and Ecuador. The region is experiencing rapid growth due to its use of modern agricultural technologies and business practices and the expansion of agricultural land under irrigation. Peruvian coastal irrigation projects are behind schedule but will eventually (in the next five years) incorporate nearly 300,000 hectares of high-quality land dedicated almost entirely to export-oriented produce (Redagricola, 2017). The region has the potential for even further expansion of agricultural land. According to Fischer and Shah (2010), Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador have approximately 109 million hectares of potentially available good land for the production of wheat, maize, soybeans, sugarcane, or palm oil, approximately 10% of which is highly accessible. U.S. consumers will surely benefit from a larger variety of fruits and vegetables with lower prices if the Andean countries can compete efficiently with the lower transportation cost of Mexican exports. Moreover, those imports come when the Northern Hemisphere is in its season of lower production. The region also is innovating by introducing “superfoods” to the rest of the world, including quinoa, açai berries, lucuma, and amaranth, but these crops still account only for a very small share of exports (Krader and Bartenstein, 2018).

• “The Ripple Effects of U.S. Monetary Policy on Social Unrest and Conflict” (with J. Acuña, P. Romero) 

We estimate the dynamic causal effect of the U.S. monetary policy on social unrest and armed conflict in Africa and the Middle East by leveraging high-frequency monetary policy surprises. We find a consistent reduction in social unrest and armed conflict in response to contractionary policies. We determine that the policy sustains declines in commodity and consumer prices, which translates to less conflict despite the overall economic contraction. As anticipated, we discover that the same shocks have standard effects on foreign economies, such as contracting their GDP. This demonstrates the complex mapping between the economy and social unrest. The findings point to non-traditional channels of propagation of global shocks.

• “Fishing Productivity Gap and Marine Plastic Pollution: A Decomposition Analysis for Coastal Artisanal Fishermen in Ecuador and Peru.” As part of the project Reducing the impacts of plastic waste in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Institute of Geography USFQ. 2024. (R&R in Marine Policy, with P. Llerena, C. Mena, P. Martinez, Sara Purca, Joanna Alfaro-Shigueto, S. Cardenas)

Given the key global role of the fishing sector, there is a need for further understanding of the heterogeneous impact of marine plastic pollution on social and economic outcomes. Focusing on the artisanal fishing sector in Ecuador and Peru, this study examines which fishers are most vulnerable to productivity losses resulting from plastic pollution. We use primary data on artisanal fishers from the Ecuadorian and Peruvian coastal zones and find that Peruvian fishers are 37.8% more productive than Ecuadorian respondents. Moreover, Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition analysis indicates that plastic debris affects Ecuadorian producers the most as the productivity gap in favor of Peruvian producers increases with higher plastic pollution exposure. Robustness check strategies support our results and that the endowment and structural effects are drivers of this gap. We also find that association membership, and age reduce the productivity differential, whereas training in plastic waste management widens it.

• “Marine Plastic Pollution and Its Negative Effects on Coastal Tourism: A Causal Analysis in Ecuador and Peru.” As part of the project Reducing the impacts of plastic waste in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Institute of Geography USFQ. 2024 (with P. Llerena, C. Mena, S. Cardenas)

Coastal tourism is a key activity for the economic and social development for Ecuador and Peru. These countries enjoy diverse coastal recreational sites, which are visited by national and foreign tourists. Unfortunately, these coastal tourism activities are threatened by marine plastic pollution and their visitors may opt to switch recreational site if they observe this plastic pollutant along their preferred beaches. Thus, our objective is to measure the potential negative impact of plastic pollution on different tourism outcomes along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru. Using instrumental variable estimation, we find that a typical visitor may reduce her trip spending in US$ 1.16 (Ecuador) and US$ 1.14 (Peru). Although this seems a small economic loss at the margin, we find a significant economic loss of US$ 2.09 million (Ecuador) and US$ 1.12 million (Peru), which are 0.24% and 0.47% of the total beach tourism income in these countries, respectively. We also find that an average tourist may reduce her visits at our study beach in 3 times a year, 7 trips day and 2 number of visited beaches during the whole trip. We urge and recommend policy actions for national and local policy makers to mitigate this detrimental impact of plastic pollution for good economic outlook over their coastal recreational sites. 

• “A more informative gender gap analysis: The case of coffee producers in Colombia and Ecuador.” 

Previous studies have decomposed the differences in productivity between male and female producers, where they identified a consistent productivity bias in favor of men. A claim to this literature is that their conceptual framework does not consider the intra-household dynamics that shape productivity decisions and assumes a farm household behaving as a single-utility maximizer, where preferences belonging to the head of the household, who is usually a male member, represent the intrahousehold social preferences. Second, the traditional empirical gender analyses attempt to explain the productivity differential between men and women as a function of household headship, by which households said to be headed by men are thought to have a different productivity level than households headed by women. The problem with this approach is that, in households headed by one individual, agricultural decisions may be taken by another individual and that it is at most a partial view of the reality, especially in those households headed by men. Thus, our research utilizes the conceptual collective model where preferences of family members (i.e., husband and wife) are bargained, which then allows us to empirically control for these dynamics and decompose the gap between two types of households, those with low and high women’s bargaining power (BP). Our research documents a “more inclusive” (i.e., considering husband and wife’s agricultural participation) gender gap analysis for coffee producers in Colombia and Ecuador by decomposing this gap with the Oaxaca-Blinder method. For this sample, the average gap is 52% in favor of households with low women’s BP; this gap changes from 12% to 82% across percentiles of productivity distribution. Estimates derived from our decomposition models report that the endowment effect explains this gender differential. Policy actions addressing disparities in the markets of coffee, labor, credit, and input, with the improvement in human capital in general, could diminish this productivity differential. Our results are exposed to different robustness checks.  

• Oil Royalties and the Productive Matrix in Ecuador: A Difference-in-Difference Analysis (With Eduardo Escobar, undergraduate thesis, expected graduation May 2025).