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...

Social preferences for the punishment of free riders are critical for generating cooperative behavior in human society. Focusing on the receiving fees of Japan's public broadcaster, this study analyses how punishment of free riders, that is, the strengthening of legal responses against them,...

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...

We study the heterogeneity of preferences regarding the limited substitutability of environmental public goods vis-a-vis private consumption goods and how it affects the economic valuation of environmental public goods. We show theoretically that mean marginal willingness to pay for an...