A contest is a situation in which individuals or groups expend costly resources while competing to win a specific prize. The variety of economic situations that can be described as contests has attracted enormous attention from economic theorists. Despite the extensive theoretical research of...

This thesis includes three essays that examine the impact on network externalities (demand side economies of scale) on agent behaviour in markets. Essays 2 and 3 use experimental methodology to test predictions from theory. The fourth essay analyses field data collected from a specific market...

This dissertation consists of three essays on experimental and behavioral economics that examine how decision-making in the laboratory environment is affected by changes in context.1 The first three essays focus on how behavior changes when individuals are presented with two simultaneous...

This paper reports a preliminary laboratory experiment in which traders make investments to increase the reliability of tradable instruments that represent greenhouse gas emissions allowances. In one half of the sessions these investments are unobservable, while in the other half traders can...

This thesis examines three unrelated market-based policies. The first topic is the "green marketing" phenomenon, whereby producers attempt to differentiate their products based on environmental quality. "Buying green" has two main beneficial components: the benefit accruing to the individual...

In theory, competitive emission permit markets minimise total abatement cost for any emissionceiling. Permit markets are often imperfectly competitive, however, if they are thin anddominated by large firms. The dominant firm(s) could exercise market power and increase otherfirms’ costs of...