We test in a laboratory experiment three regulations imposed on a common-pool resource game: an access fee and subsidy scheme, transferable quotas and non-transferable quotas. Theory predicts that they all reduce resource use from free access to the same target level without hurting users. We...

This paper discusses why running experiments in the field, outside of the university lab, can help us enrich the analysis we do of experimental data. One of the main arguments of the paper is that people participating in experiments, including students, do not come naked to the lab. They bring a...

The use of experimental settings to observe human behaviour in a controlled environment of incentives, rules and institutions, has been widely used by the behavioural sciences for some time now, particularly by psychology and economics. In most cases the subjects are college students recruited...

Regulations that are designed to improve social welfare typically begin with the premise that individuals are purely self-interested. Experimental evidence shows, however, that individuals do not typically behave this way; instead, they tend to strike a balance between self and group interests....

En esta ponencia queremos explorar, a partir de nuestros resultados de investigacion, posibles puentes de complementariedad y sinergia entre la economia experimental y los m_todos participativos de investigacion, para poder estudiar problemas rurales, en particular aquellos asociados al uso de...

The study of collective action requires an understanding of the individual incentives and of the institutional constraints that guide people in making choices about cooperating or defecting on the group facing the dilemma. The use of local ecosystems by groups of individuals is just one example...

The internalization of external costs arising from a group dilemma between the individual and social interests require the design of institutions through the market, the state or self-governance that are able to induce in the agents a change in their pecuniary and non-material incentives so that...

Many forest ecosystems provide multiple goods and services to both local users (e.g. firewood, water) and to other external beneficiaries (biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration). This calls for alternative approaches in the governance of these local ecosystems. Even if local users...