The Evidence Base for Environmental and Socioeconomic Impacts of “Sustainable” Certification

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Initiatives certifying that farms and firms adhere to predefined environmental and social welfare production standards are increasingly popular. According to proponents, they create financial incentives for farms and firms to improve their environmental and socioeconomic performance. This paper reviews the evidence on whether sustainable certification of agricultural commodities and tourism operations actually has such benefits.

Policy Design

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

Paying the Price of Sweetening Your Donation: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment

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Using a natural field experiment in a recreational site, a public good almost fully dependent on voluntary donations, the authors explored the crowding-out effect of gift rewards. First, they investigated whether receiving a map in appreciation of a donation crowded out prosocial behavior and found no significant effect of giving the map. Second, they explored the effect of adding the map to a treatment designed to increase donations.

Conservation, Policy Design

Social Background, Cooperative Behavior, and Norm Enforcement

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Studies have shown differences in cooperative behavior across countries and in the use of (and reaction to) a norm enforcement mechanism in cross-cultural studies.

 

The authors present data that prove that stark differences in both dimensions can exist even within the same town. They created a unique data set, based on one-shot public goods experiments in South Africa. Most of the group differences can be explained by variables for social capital and social environment, such as trust or household violence.

Experiments

Conditional Cooperation and Social Group: Experimental Results from Colombia

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There is growing interest in understanding whether behavior is the same across locations. By holding cross- and within-country dimensions constant (in contrast to previous studies on cross-group comparisons of conditional cooperation), the authors investigated cooperative behavior between social groups in the same location. Their results reveal significantly different cooperation behavior, suggesting that different social groups exhibit differences both in terms of composition of types and extent of conditional cooperation.

 

Experiments

Toward a new Nile Waters Agreement

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EfD Authors:

Increasing world demands for water call for new institutions and rules to minimize economic and political conflicts. Growing water quality problems from industry and agriculture only further exacerbate supply problems. Such conflicts can jeopardize economic and, in some parts of the world, even social order.

Policy Design

Income Inequality, Reciprocity and Public Goods Provision

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This paper analyses the impact of income inequality on public good provision in an experimental setting. A sample of secondary school students were recruited to participate in a simple linear public goods game where income heterogeneity was introduced by providing participants with unequal token endowments.

Experiments