Purpose – China’s government has been facing a trade-off in choosing between tenure reform and forest concessions to manage forest resources. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the government’s policy choices can be affected by environmental benefits and the economic value of...

Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. This raises the question about spouses? relative influence on joint decisions and the determinants of relative influence. Using a controlled experiment (on inter-temporal choice), we let each spouse first make individual decisions and...

This study investigates the validity of using stated preference (SP) estimates to predict policy effects on plastic bag consumption. Before implementation of a plastic bag regulation, when bags were still free of charge, we utilized an SP survey to elicit consumers’ contingent bag consumption...

Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. This raises the question about spouses’ relative influence on joint decisions and the determinants of relative influence. Using a controlled experiment (on inter-temporal choice), we let each spouse first make individual decisions and...

To reduce plastic bag litter, China introduced a nationwide regulation requiring all retailers to charge for plastic shopping bags on June 1, 2008. By using the policy implementation as a natural experiment and collecting individual-level data before and after the implementation, we investigate...

We experimentally investigate, using a dictator game, if the effects of windfall and earned endowments on behavior differ between men and women genders. In line with previous studies, we find that windfall endowments significantly increase the amount donated. The impact of moving from earned to...

A growing number of experimental studies focus on the differences between the lab and the field. Important in this issue is the role of windfall money. By conducting a dictator game, where the recipient is a charity organization, in exactly the same way in the laboratory and in the field, we...

One method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to subsidize emissions-reducing activities. The question is how to allocate such subsidies. Allocation through auctions is an emerging mechanism. In a controlled experimental market setting, we compare the effects of a variety of auction...

In an experiment, we study risk-taking of cohabitating student couples, finding that couples’ decisions are closer to risk-neutrality than single partners’ decisions. This finding is similar to earlier experiments with randomly assigned groups, corroborating external validity of earlier results.

Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. Running an experiment on intertemporal choice, we investigate the relative influence of spouses on joint household decisions. We let each spouse first decide individually and then jointly with the other spouse. We propose the use of a...