Payment for ecosystem service (PES) programs incentivize farmers to implement agricultural best management practices (BMPs) with the goal of reducing nutrient and sediment runoff and improving water quality. These programs are widespread at both the federal and state level. Because some farmers...

Theory commonly posits agents who care both for the level of provision of a public good and the extent to which they personally contribute to the cause. Simply put, agents feel some "warm glow" from the donations they make. I discuss a fundraiser devised to exogenously vary the incentive to give...

Defense spending accounts for a large share of the budget in many countries, but the value of the resulting public good - national defense - has so far escaped assessment. Much of the literature has instead considered indirect benefits of defense spending in terms of greater economic growth or...

This paper examines individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) to offset their carbon footprint in response to receiving information about (i) the size of their own carbon footprint, and (ii) further receiving in addition information about the difference between their carbon footprint and the target...

Cities are increasingly hold accountable for climate action. By demonstrating their proenvironmentality through own climate-related activities, they not at least aspire to encourage individual climate protection efforts. Based on standard economic theory there is little reason to assume that...

Cities are increasingly hold accountable for climate action. By demonstrating their proenvironmentality through own climate-related activities, they not at least aspire to encourage individual climate protection efforts. Based on standard economic theory there is little reason to assume that...

There is a substantial literature examining coordination in public goods games. We conducted an experiment to explore how varying patterns of thresholds affect the willingness of subjects to contribute to a public good. We had subjects play a multiperiod game where each subject was allocated an...

People contribute more to public goods, the more others give ('crowding-in'). We investigate two possible causes of crowding-in: reciprocity, the usual explanation, and conformism, a neglected alternative. The issue is important since conformism has more scope to bring about endogenous social...

People contribute more to public goods, the more others give (“crowding-in”). We investigate two possible causes of crowding-in: reciprocity, the usual explanation, and conformism, a neglected alternative. The issue is important since conformism has more scope to bring about endogenous...

In this paper we discuss experimental evidence for two different institutional approaches to a possible resolution of the fundamental conflict between social welfare maximization and individual utility maximization. The basic workhorse for modelling this conflict is the voluntary contribution of...