Do EPA Administrators Recommend Environmental Policies That Citizens Want?

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We investigate whether Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator recommendations regarding improvements in environmental quality differ from citizen preferences.

Policy Design

Farmers' Preferences for Crop Variety Traits: Lessons for On-farm Conservation and Technology Adoption

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Although in-situ conservation is increasingly considered an efficient way of conserving plant genetic resources, little is known about the incentives and constraints that govern conservation decisions among small farm holders in developing countries.

Experiments

Conformity and the Demand for Environmental Goods

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We test the hypothesis that people conform to certain social norms, i.e. that some individuals may be willing to pay a higher price premium for green products the more widespread green consumerism is in society.

Experiments

A choice experiment on coca cropping

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EfD Authors:

From 1997 to 2005, an astonishing 5200 million USD was invested to reduce cocaine production in Colombia, the world's main cocaine producer. However, little is known about the effectiveness of policies targeting coca cultivation. This paper uses a survey-based experiment to evaluate the effects of the two main policies: eradication and alternative development programs.

Agriculture, Experiments, Policy Design

Production risk and farm technology adoption in the rain-fed semi-arid lands of Kenya

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This study provides empirical evidence on the effects of production risk on smallholder farmers’ adoption of farm technology, using plot-level data collected from two semi-arid districts in Kenya, Machakos and Taita Taveta.

Agriculture

Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Tell Me Who to Follow! Field Experiment Evidence on Voluntary Donations

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The authors conducted a field experiment in a protected area to explore the effects of conformity to a social reference versus a comparable, but imposed, suggested donation. By keeping the intrinsic valuation of the good constant, they were able to explore the effect of these two treatments on self image.

Experiments

Farmers’ Choice between Public Goods and Agricultural Extension Packages in Ethiopia: A Stated Preference Analysis

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Currently, there is a general dichotomy in rural development policies. This dichotomy between extension-driven adoption of modern inputs on the one hand, and community-driven local public goods on the other hand, is particularly evident in the highlands of Ethiopia. Despite the obvious trade-offs between these two approaches, the target populations seldom get the chance to express their preferences for them.

 

Agriculture, Policy Design

It is better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix: a study of concern for relative standing in rural China

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This paper examines the concern for relative standing among rural households in China. We used a survey-experimental method to measure to what extent poor Chinese farmers care about their relative income and found that the respondents cared to a high degree

Experiments

Attitudes Toward Uncertainty Among the Poor: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

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The authors looked at risk and ambiguity attitudes among Ethiopian peasants in one of the poorest regions of the world and compared their attitudes to a standard Western university student sample elicited by the same decision task.

Strong risk aversion and ambiguity aversion were found with the Ethiopian peasants, and these attitudes are similar to those of the university students. Testing for the effect of socioeconomic variables on uncertainty attitudes showed that poor health increased both risk and ambiguity aversion.

 

 

Experiments