The management of natural resources located on private lands often involves a perceived conflict between the mix of private and public benefit outputs they produce. Governments have tended to respond through legislation to restrict and redirect private decisions about resource management. However, the legislative response faces a lack of information about the costs and benefits of alternative management and policy instruments. A pertinent example of this debate is the management of wetlands on private lands. The goal in this thesis is to advance the design of policy relating to the production of environmental outputs on private lands. This goal is achieved by first estimating the welfare impacts of alternative private land management strategies on the wider community. These estimates are used as inputs into the development of alternative policy instruments that are then evaluated in terms of their potential cost-effectiveness in influencing private management. Two case studies of wetland management on private land in Australia are presented ??? the Upper South East Region of South Australia, and, the Murrumbidgee River Floodplain in New South Wales. The conceptual approach described in the first part of the thesis includes a description of the resource management problem and the strengths and weaknesses of the alternative decision frameworks widely employed in Australia. Identification of the cause and nature of transaction costs in the management process is the focus in this discussion. The welfare impacts of alternative wetland management strategies are investigated through the construction of a bio-economic model for each of the case study areas. The approach integrates biophysical analysis of changing wetland management with the value society places on wetlands. Outputs from this process are used in the development of a range of policy instruments directed towards influencing wetland management. The impact of poorly quantified and uncertain transaction costs on the potential cost-effectiveness of these options is evaluated using threshold policy analysis. The empirical results show that the perception of a conflict between the private and public values generated by resource management is accurate. For example, scenarios changing wetland management in the Upper South East of South Australia on the Murrumbidgee River floodplain in New South Wales were shown to generate net benefits of $5.2m and $5.1m respectively. Hence, changing wetland management could generate increased community welfare. The potential for these findings to be translated into wetland policy is less conclusive. Policies directed towards wetland management (in part or in whole) incur a range of transaction costs and deliver differential wetland protection benefits. Ten ???best bet??? policies are identified, but more information is required to determine conclusively whether a net benefit results to the wider community when transaction costs are included.

Nous abordons dans un premier chapitre la question de l'équivalence entre le CAP et le CAR. La disparité entre les deux indices a de profondes conséquences sur les prises de décision environnementales. Si la disparité était au départ associée aux carences de la méthode de mise en œuvre des enquêtes, les racines du problème s'avèrent être sensiblement plus profondes. Eu égard à l'évaluation des biens publics, nous pensons que la disparité est due à la substituabilité imparfaite entre les biens privés et publiques, ainsi qu'en raison de perceptions différenciées des agents économiques entre gains et pertes. C'est à cette problématique que le premier chapitre se consacre. Ainsi, le Chapitre 1 traite de la disparité entre les indices CAP et CAR dans l'évaluation hors-marché. Dans la littérature, l'effet de substitution et l'effet de dotation sont tenus responsables de l'existence des disparités. Nous montrons que la substituabilité imparfaite dans la fonction d'utilité indirecte peut provoquer la disparité soit entre le CAP et le CAR - en raison du coût d'opportunité -, soit entre les gains et les pertes, où il s'agit d'évaluer une perte sèche. La mesure en termes relatifs accentue la substituabilité imparfaite, mais l'effet de substitution est borné dans le modèle d'aversion aux pertes. Ce premier chapitre prépare le terrain pour le Chapitre 2, où nous évaluons un vrai bien public dans un contexte d'enchères expérimentales. Les offres d'achat et de vente reflètent le CAP et le CAR, d'où leur importance. L'effet de dotation et le choix du meilleur mécanisme d'enchères y sont examinés. Les études en enchères expérimentales jusqu'ici menées ont porté sur des biens privés non marchands ; elles sont supposées divulguer ce qui se passerait en présence de biens publics, car il est a priori difficile d'envisager une expérience où le bien public est échangé. Nous y parvenons. Nous n'employons pas de valeurs induites mais laissons libre cours aux valeurs autoproduites par les sujets d'étude recrutés pour l'occasion. L'étude nous permet de vérifier si, sur des marchés simulés, bien privé non marchand et bien public sont évalués de manière identique. Ainsi, nous évaluons l'impact de trois mécanismes d'enchère - le mécanisme Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM), l'enchère au deuxième prix, et l'enchère aléatoire au nième prix - dans l'évaluation des CAP et CAR privés d'un bien public pur. Nos résultats montrent que l'effet de dotation peut être éliminé en répétant le mécanisme BDM. Néanmoins, à l'échelle logarithmique, l'enchère aléatoire au nième prix donne la vitesse de convergence vers l'égalité des indices de bien-être la plus élevée. Plus généralement, nous observons que les sujets d'étude évaluent les biens publics en se référant à l'avantage privé et subjectif qui résulte du financement du bien public. Par la suite, le Chapitre 3 discute de la sincérité des préférences en enchères expérimentales répétées et traite des propriétés incitatives des mécanismes BDM et l'enchère aléatoire au nième prix. Une propriété des mécanismes d'enchères est la compatibilité avec les incitations, dans laquelle un offreur a une stratégie faiblement dominante de soumettre une offre égale à sa valeur. Il a été prouvé que les deux mécanismes sont compatibles avec les incitations. En évaluation, on répète des sessions d'enchères pour donner aux offreurs l'opportunité d'apprendre le mécanisme de marché : leur donner du temps pour révéler leurs préférences. Or, ce procédé les contre-incite à adapter leurs préférences en fonction des prix publiquement signalés, si bien qu'il crée un risque de licitation stratégique (par opposition aux offres sincères). Si les offreurs s'engagent dans des stratégies déviantes pour faire face à l'incertitude sur la valeur du bien public, les mécanismes d'enchères perdent leur propriété de compatibilité avec les incitations et révèlent de fausses préférences. Lorsque les prix dépendent des offres soumises, c'est-à-dire en présence de mécanismes de marché répétés avec prix de compensation endogènes, l'hypothèse de l'indépendance des valeurs privées - sous-jacente à la compatibilité avec les incitations - est remise en question ; même si ce type de mécanismes fournit une participation active et un apprentissage du marché. Dans sa vision orthodoxe, le comportement marchand d'adaptation met en péril la compatibilité avec les incitations. Nous introduisons un modèle qui montre que les enchérisseurs licitent suivant l'heuristique d'ancrage et d'ajustement, dépendante d'une fonction de pondération séquentielle, laquelle prend en compte les contraintes de compatibilité avec les incitations sans rejeter les prix signalés issus des autres offres. En déviant de leur ancrage dans le sens du signal public, les enchérisseurs opèrent dans un équilibre corrélé. Comme le prouve l'expérience du Chapitre 2, les contributions privées aux biens publics sont issues d'une démarche d'évaluation. Elles sont conduites aussi bien par des incitations asociales que sociales. Si l'offre privée du bien public est stimulée à la fois par une rationalité qui dicte de ne pas contribuer au bien public et de profiter de l'effort fourni par la collectivité, et par l'appétit pour la reconnaissance sociale qui incite à se faire publiquement connaître en tant que généreux donateur, laquelle des deux motivations domine ? Le Chapitre 4 fait ainsi la comparaison entre déculpabilisation et compétition pour le statut social dans la provision privée des biens publics. Lorsque les agents sont intrinsèquement impulsés, c'est-à-dire qu'ils contribuent essentiellement aux biens publics dans le but de soulager leur culpabilité d'avoir indirectement participé à leur dégradation, ils tendent à se comporter en passagers clandestins. En revanche, lorsque les agents sont extrinsèquement impulsés et se mettent en compétition pour atteindre du statut social qu'ils visent par le financement des biens publics à titre privé, leurs contributions deviennent des compléments stratégiques. Dans ce cas, le niveau agrégé des biens publics croît avec la réduction des écarts de revenus entre les agents. Injecter de la compétition pour le statut social dans des fonctions d'utilité augmente les contributions aux biens publics, et donc leur niveau global, faisant de la concurrence une incitation féconde pour résoudre le problème du passager clandestin.

No description available.

This article experimentally examines voluntary contributions when group members' marginal returns to the public good vary. The experiment implements two marginal return types, low and high, and uses the information that members have about the heterogeneity to identify the applied contribution norm. We find that norms vary with the information environment. If agents are aware of the heterogeneity, contributions increase in general. However, high types contribute more than low types when contributions can be linked to the type of the donor but contribute less otherwise. Low types, on the other hand, contribute more than high types when group members are aware of the heterogeneity but contributions cannot be linked to types. Our results underline the importance of the information structure when persons with different abilities contribute to a joint project, as in the context of teamwork or charitable giving. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

At its core, this dissertation examines the role of information, particularly as it relates to proxies for quality, and how it affects both donor and organization decision processes in the humanitarian space. In Chapter 2 I consider the context of competition within the sub-sector of international humanitarian relief organizations. It has been observed that large scale humanitarian relief events tend to spawn highly competitive environments in which organizations compete with one another for publicity and funding, often times to the detriment of effective resource utilization. The question of why altruistic organizations behave in this manner arises. Positing that competition is a result of dual organization objectives and the inability to credibly signal quality a model of signaling is presented to explain this phenomenon, and conditions under which pooling and separating equilibrium can occur are shown. Results are shown to match closely with observed behavior, and potential policy remedies are considered using the model as a foundation. Chapter 3 addresses a similar question but broadens the analysis to that of a general market for charitable goods. Building on foundational results in search theory, I propose a two-stage model of donor search behavior to explain the effects of transparency and exposure on both donor and organization behavior as it regards how donors select organizations. Using both analytical and simulated results I show how donor behavior changes under various market constructions, with implications on total market outcomes and organization behavior discussed. Chapter 4 concludes with an empirical analysis to test the assumptions and results from the models of Chapters 2 and 3. Using an observational data set provided by the online charitable giving marketplace GlobalGiving, fixed effects panel regression and logit models are used to investigate the effects of transparency on both the amount of a donor's gift, and on the likelihood of repeat giving. Results are complicated by discussed validity issues, and in general show that within the context of GlobalGiving proxied transparency does not appear to have a significant practical effect on either the amount of the gift or organization selection by a given donor. While some significance is shown for various constructions, the results are not shown to be robust. A discussion of the results within the context of the donor search model of Chapter 3 is also provided.

No description available.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The management of natural resources located on private lands often involves a perceived conflict between the mix of private and public benefit outputs they produce. Governments have tended to respond through legislation to restrict and redirect private decisions about resource management. However, the legislative response faces a lack of information about the costs and benefits of alternative management and policy instruments. A pertinent example of this debate is the management of wetlands on private lands. The goal in this thesis is to advance the design of policy relating to the production of environmental outputs on private lands. This goal is achieved by first estimating the welfare impacts of alternative private land management strategies on the wider community. These estimates are used as inputs into the development of alternative policy instruments that are then evaluated in terms of their potential cost-effectiveness in influencing private management. Two case studies of wetland management on private land in Australia are presented ??? the Upper South East Region of South Australia, and, the Murrumbidgee River Floodplain in New South Wales. The conceptual approach described in the first part of the thesis includes a description of the resource management problem and the strengths and weaknesses of the alternative decision frameworks widely employed in Australia. Identification of the cause and nature of transaction costs in the management process is the focus in this discussion. The welfare impacts of alternative wetland management strategies are investigated through the construction of a bio-economic model for each of the case study areas. The approach integrates biophysical analysis of changing wetland management with the value society places on wetlands. Outputs from this process are used in the development of a range of policy instruments directed towards influencing wetland management. The impact of poorly quantified and uncertain transaction costs on the potential cost-effectiveness of these options is evaluated using threshold policy analysis. The empirical results show that the perception of a conflict between the private and public values generated by resource management is accurate. For example, scenarios changing wetland management in the Upper South East of South Australia on the Murrumbidgee River floodplain in New South Wales were shown to generate net benefits of $5.2m and $5.1m respectively. Hence, changing wetland management could generate increased community welfare. The potential for these findings to be translated into wetland policy is less conclusive. Policies directed towards wetland management (in part or in whole) incur a range of transaction costs and deliver differential wetland protection benefits. Ten ???best bet??? policies are identified, but more information is required to determine conclusively whether a net benefit results to the wider community when transaction costs are included.

The management of natural resources located on private lands often involves a perceived conflict between the mix of private and public benefit outputs they produce. Governments have tended to respond through legislation to restrict and redirect private decisions about resource management. However, the legislative response faces a lack of information about the costs and benefits of alternative management and policy instruments. A pertinent example of this debate is the management of wetlands on private lands. The goal in this thesis is to advance the design of policy relating to the production of environmental outputs on private lands. This goal is achieved by first estimating the welfare impacts of alternative private land management strategies on the wider community. These estimates are used as inputs into the development of alternative policy instruments that are then evaluated in terms of their potential cost-effectiveness in influencing private management. Two case studies of wetland management on private land in Australia are presented ??? the Upper South East Region of South Australia, and, the Murrumbidgee River Floodplain in New South Wales. The conceptual approach described in the first part of the thesis includes a description of the resource management problem and the strengths and weaknesses of the alternative decision frameworks widely employed in Australia. Identification of the cause and nature of transaction costs in the management process is the focus in this discussion. The welfare impacts of alternative wetland management strategies are investigated through the construction of a bio-economic model for each of the case study areas. The approach integrates biophysical analysis of changing wetland management with the value society places on wetlands. Outputs from this process are used in the development of a range of policy instruments directed towards influencing wetland management. The impact of poorly quantified and uncertain transaction costs on the potential cost-effectiveness of these options is evaluated using threshold policy analysis. The empirical results show that the perception of a conflict between the private and public values generated by resource management is accurate. For example, scenarios changing wetland management in the Upper South East of South Australia on the Murrumbidgee River floodplain in New South Wales were shown to generate net benefits of $5.2m and $5.1m respectively. Hence, changing wetland management could generate increased community welfare. The potential for these findings to be translated into wetland policy is less conclusive. Policies directed towards wetland management (in part or in whole) incur a range of transaction costs and deliver differential wetland protection benefits. Ten ???best bet??? policies are identified, but more information is required to determine conclusively whether a net benefit results to the wider community when transaction costs are included.

The management of natural resources located on private lands often involves a perceived conflict between the mix of private and public benefit outputs they produce. Governments have tended to respond through legislation to restrict and redirect private decisions about resource management. However, the legislative response faces a lack of information about the costs and benefits of alternative management and policy instruments. A pertinent example of this debate is the management of wetlands on private lands. The goal in this thesis is to advance the design of policy relating to the production of environmental outputs on private lands. This goal is achieved by first estimating the welfare impacts of alternative private land management strategies on the wider community. These estimates are used as inputs into the development of alternative policy instruments that are then evaluated in terms of their potential cost-effectiveness in influencing private management. Two case studies of wetland management on private land in Australia are presented ??? the Upper South East Region of South Australia, and, the Murrumbidgee River Floodplain in New South Wales. The conceptual approach described in the first part of the thesis includes a description of the resource management problem and the strengths and weaknesses of the alternative decision frameworks widely employed in Australia. Identification of the cause and nature of transaction costs in the management process is the focus in this discussion. The welfare impacts of alternative wetland management strategies are investigated through the construction of a bio-economic model for each of the case study areas. The approach integrates biophysical analysis of changing wetland management with the value society places on wetlands. Outputs from this process are used in the development of a range of policy instruments directed towards influencing wetland management. The impact of poorly quantified and uncertain transaction costs on the potential cost-effectiveness of these options is evaluated using threshold policy analysis. The empirical results show that the perception of a conflict between the private and public values generated by resource management is accurate. For example, scenarios changing wetland management in the Upper South East of South Australia on the Murrumbidgee River floodplain in New South Wales were shown to generate net benefits of $5.2m and $5.1m respectively. Hence, changing wetland management could generate increased community welfare. The potential for these findings to be translated into wetland policy is less conclusive. Policies directed towards wetland management (in part or in whole) incur a range of transaction costs and deliver differential wetland protection benefits. Ten ???best bet??? policies are identified, but more information is required to determine conclusively whether a net benefit results to the wider community when transaction costs are included.