This paper considers an environmental regulatory agency that sets both the emissions standard and the enforcement parameters in contrast to the usual treatment in which the agency sets only one of the two. It is shown that if the agency’s budget is sufficiently small, it sets the strictest...

This paper considers the applicability of the standard separability axiom for both risk and other-regarding preferences, and advances arguments why separability might fail. An alternative axiom, which is immune to these arguments, leads to a preference representation that is additively separable...

This paper considers the role of social networks in the non-market valuation of public goods. In the model individuals derive utility both from their own direct enjoyment of the public good and from the enjoyment of those in their network. We find that network structure almost always matters,...

We develop a targeting enforcement mechanism in the context of fixed inspection capacity due to budget constraint. A fixed number of firms are selected for inspection and those with the highest emissions are targeted with higher inspection probability. This structure induces dynamic rank-order...

This paper contributes to the widespread discussion of the sources of the divergence between WTA and WTP values. The paper reports on theoretical and empirical investigations which show that value and outcome uncertainty offer an explanation for this disparity. Given a set of hypotheses...

Most studies of homework effectiveness relate time spent on homework to test performance, and find a nonmonotonic relationship. A theoretical model shows that this can occur even when additional homework helps all students because of the way in which variables are defined. However, some students...

We consider a situation in which games are formed endogenously in two senses: (1) there is a pregame in which agents choose to learn a subset of all feasible strategies and can then employ only these strategies in subsequent play, and (2) agents choose their game partners through a costly search...

If its utility function is everywhere increasing and concave, rank-dependent expected utility shares a troubling property with expected utility aversion to the same moderate-stakes risk at every wealth level implies an extreme aversion to large-stakes risks. In fact, the problem may be even...