an experimental study of truth telling in a sender receiver game a recent experimental study of cai and wang 2005 on strategic information transmission reveals that subjects tend to transmit more information than predicted by the standard equilibrium analysis to evidence that this overcommunication phenomenon can be explained in terms of a tension between normative social behavior and incentives for lying we show in a simple sender receiver game that subjects incurring in costs to punish liars tell the truth more often than predicted by the logit agent quantal response equilibria whereas subjects that do not punish liars after receiving a deceptive message play on the aggregate equilibrium strategies thus we can partition the subject pool into two groups one group of subjects with preferences for truth telling and one taking into account only material incentives

separation of powers and political accountability political constitutions are incomplete contracts and therefore leave room for abuse of power in democracies elections are the primary mechanism for disciplining public officials but they are not sufficient separation of powers between executive and legislative bodies also helps to prevent the abuse of power but only with appropriate checks and balances checks and balances work by creating a conflict of interest between the executive and the legislature yet requiring both bodies to agree on public policy in this way the two bodies discipline each other to the voters advantage under appropriate checks and balances separation of powers also helps the voters elicit information

alternative models of individual behaviour and implications for environmental policy abstract most insights of environmental economics are in line with the standard neoclassical economic model of rational behaviour formulated in terms of maximization of utility in general or of profits in particular the standard theory of environmental policy is a case in point however the maximization hypothesis and its methodological foundation have been criticized on many grounds related to a lack of either logical or empirical content moreover over the years a great many alternative models of behaviour have been proposed both criticism and alternatives are surveyed here attention is devoted to relevant insights from the philosophy of science the notion of methodological individualism and other criticism the alternative behavioural models include bounded rationality and satisficing lexicographic preferences habitual behaviour incommensurability and multicriteria evaluation and various models of behaviour under uncertainty major implications of the criticism and alternative models of individual behaviour for environmental policy theory are outlined

synergetic effects of water and climate policy on energy water nexus in china a computable general equilibrium analysis abstract a unified policy framework for energy and water would be beneficial considering the high interdependence of the two resources in china in this paper a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model is established to examine the existence of synergetic effects within water fee policy and energy related climate policy i e carbon tax and provide insights for chinese integrative policy making the results show that water fee can contribute to industrial water conservation whereas its effect is limited under current water fee level the adoption of a carbon tax in addition to it might further improve its water saving benefits furthermore water fee can also promote the enhancement of china s emission reduction goal and a higher carbon tax and water fee rate can achieve greater emission reduction effects at this point the synergetic spillover effects that water conservation benefits will be achieved simultaneously via the transition of industry into a more low carbon form is critical for elaborating an effective strategy of environmental policy besides our results suggest that giving priority to renewable power is regarded as the silver bullet to address the water and emission constraints on energy system as it can optimize the water conservation benefits of emission reduction

boulding s welfare approach of communicative deliberation abstract british institutional economist shaun hargreaves heap once wrote that orthodox welfare economics runs into problems generating public policy prescriptions because it works with a picture of individuals as solely a bunch of well behaved preferences which they are motivated in their actions to satisfy in an instrumental fashion 1989 206 most ecological economists will probably agree with this critique because it is certainly true when the welfare objective shifts from quantitative economic growth to preserving this planet as a life provisioning and enjoyable habitat for future generations so what constitutes and enhances ecologically sustainable welfare to answer this question a number of scholars have highlighted the need for an alternative model of behaviour be it as a micro foundation for a sustainability oriented welfare theory or as a normative guiding post to direct our concrete action and institutional change this article will show that kenneth e boulding developed such an alternative welfare approach based on a communicative behavioural conception over about forty years of his academic career founded on a communicative action his welfare theory is based on deliberative valuation

from multi utility to cross utilities the challenges of cross sectoral entrepreneurial strategies in a german city in the water and energy sectors projects geared towards new forms of cross sectoral functioning have boomed in most european countries over the past decade and have deeply transformed the ecology

policy and institutional dimensions of the water energy nexus energy and water are interlinked the development use and waste generated by demand for both resources drive global change managing them in tandem offers potential for global change adaptation but presents institutional challenges this paper advances understanding of the water energy nexus by demonstrating how these resources are coupled at multiple scales and by uncovering institutional opportunities and impediments to joint decision making three water energy nexus cases in the united states are examined 1 water and energy development in the water scarce southwest 2 conflicts between coal development environmental quality and social impacts in the east and 3 tensions between environmental quality and economic development of shale natural gas in the northeast and central u s these cases are related to eastern central and western regional stakeholder priorities collected in a national effort to assess energy water scenarios we find that localized challenges are diminished when considered from broader perspectives while regionally important challenges are not prioritized locally the transportability of electricity and to some extent raw coal and gas makes energy more suitable than water to regionalized global change adaptation because many of the impacts to water availability and quality remain localized we conclude by highlighting the need for improved coordination between water and energy policy

discourse based valuation of ecosystem services establishing fair outcomes through group deliberation discourse based methods involving small groups of citizens have yet to be thoroughly engaged in the practice of ecosystem valuation this remains true despite the fact that many ecosystem goods and services such as clean air biodiversity and unpolluted lakes and rivers are considered to be public goods the conventional application of ecosystem valuation relies heavily on methodologies such as contingent valuation in which individuals are asked to express the value they attach to ecosystem goods and services in social isolation the difference between the public nature of ecosystem services and their valuation through individual expression has thus recently led to calls for more deliberative forms of environmental valuation because the allocation of ecosystem services directly affects many people and raises normative questions about social equity it is argued that carefully designed discursive methods will help ensure the achievement of social equity goals in this paper we examine the theoretical and normative assumptions that rest beneath the proposed turn towards discourse based methods and identify procedures for testing their application in the field 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

a proposal for integration of the ecosystem water food land energy ewfle nexus concept into life cycle assessment a synthesis matrix system for food security ensuring secure access to food and energy worldwide relies on win win share of sectoral use of constrained natural resources such as land and water taking also into account the crucial role of ecosystems and their services the increase in global population and the related growing demand for food and other services are exerting unsustainable pressures on natural resources compromising their use within the ecosystems carrying capacity progressively studies and initiatives have been developed with the aim of identifying win win share strategies which may compensate the sectoral demands of natural resources addressing the need of a holistic and interdisciplinary nexus approach in this study thus emphasizing the importance of a holistic approach and highlighting the fundamental role of ecosystems we propose a synthesis matrix system that describes the complex and closely bound relationship between natural resources use for food specifically water land energy defined as ecosystem service flows in our matrix system and ecosystems along the lines of the concept of ecosystem water food land energy nexus the synthesis matrix system could be defined for different scales both from the global to the local scale and has been designed to include impacts and nexus with climate change the matrix aims at integrating quantitative and qualitative aspects which are often neglected in traditional approaches of impact assessment the complexity of the interactions between the different components of the nexus requires relying not only on quantitative evidences but also on expert judgment a sensitivity check has been conducted to illustrate how to verify the convergence of expert judgment from different experts moreover being the matrix meant for supporting holistic assessment of supply chain in the present study the integration of the matrix within life cycle assessment lca is proposed however in order to support the analysis of interconnections among impacts further methodological development of the lca methods is needed an illustrative example related to the competition for water land and food bioenergy production is depicted the matrices show that there are predominantly negative impacts given by sectoral uses of resources on the provision of ecosystem services an issue that requires most focus on resource efficiency and on the environmental and economic impacts of natural resources use while reducing the trade offs between the sectoral demands

does electoral accountability affect economic policy choices evidence from gubernatorial term limits this paper analyzes the behavior of u s governors from 1950 to 1986 to investigate a reputation building model of political behavior we argue that differences in the behavior of governors who face a binding term limit and those who are able to run again provides a source of variation in discount rates that can be used to test a political agency model we find evidence that taxes spending and other policy instruments respond to a binding term limit if a democrat is in office the result is a fiscal cycle in term limit states which lowers state income when the term limit binds

identifying the driving factors of energy water nexus in beijing from both economy and sector wide perspectives abstract this study develops an integrated analytical framework based on lmdi method to identify the driving factors of energy and water ew nexus in beijing from both economy and sector wide perspectives the notable findings are 1 the service and urban household sectors contributed most to the increase of energy use while the agriculture sector played a dominated role in the large decline of water use in beijing from 2002 to 2017 service and urban household were the key sectors of ew nexus 2 both economy and sector wide factors exerted synergistic effects on ew use although their contributions to water saving were much higher than energy saving regarding economy wide factors production expansion considerably increased both ew use in beijing with the contribution degrees of 129 9 and 276 2 respectively and population expansion also played an important role in increasing ew use with the contribution degree of 10 3 and 32 9 while efficiency improvement and industrial structure adjustment led to much more water saving of 261 7 and 145 1 than energy saving of 56 6 and 5 6 respectively as to sector wide factors production expansion of industry and service sectors and income improvement of urban household contributed to a considerable increase in both energy and water use and the contribution degree are 58 3 65 7 and 28 5 for energy use as well as 61 0 79 8 and 22 8 for water use respectively whereas efficiency improvement of industry sector effectively curbed the increase of energy and water use with the contribution degree of 50 5 and 76 7 respectively 3 the only trade off between energy and water saving occurred in the efficiency improvement of the agriculture sector 4 more attention should be paid to reducing ew use in the service and urban household sectors through efficiency improvement and behavior guidance for ew saving

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

discursive ethics in ecosystems valuation and environmental policy abstract discursive ethics has its origin in the frankfurt school of critical theory as an applied ethic it is also associated with practical philosophy in this paper discursive ethics is discussed as a conceptual and practical framework for ecosystems valuation and environmental policy the discussion focuses on three main strengths of discursive ethics 1 it offers an integrated process for ecosystems valuation 2 it offers a decision making framework for responding to uncertainty and risk and the reality of action in indeterminacy 3 it offers a process for deconstructing common valuation concepts and identifying conditions for their critical reconstruction the theoretical discussion is followed by a case study example which illustrates the usefulness of discursive ethics in identifying valuation biases hidden behind disciplinary assumptions and conceptual norms these include cultural norms of rationality information biases which consider hard facts over soft values and disciplinary valuation biases which distinguish between hard and soft expert contributions as the case study illustrates a successful application of discursive ethics in ecosystems valuation and environmental policy demands sensitivity to such underlying biases beyond its policy relevance discursive ethics may also offer a framework for an extended peer discourse through which new foci in research and education can be identified

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

retrospectives cost benefit analysis and the classical creed cost bene t analysis provides the dominant economic approach with whicheconomists talk to each other to government bureaucrats and to the general laityabout the desirability of public programs and investment projects cost bene tstudies have pushed economic thinking into public debates and reciprocally havebrought an uncommon level of public scrutiny to the technical deliberations ofeconomists precisely because cost bene t analysis addresses serious real world decisions this widely used and frequently abused tool of applied economics has had a bumpyhistory last year newspaper headlines across the country announced that apentagon investigation had found systematic manipulation of net bene t estimatesat the army corps of engineers for example grunwald 2000 the corps hasbeen the political godfather of cost bene t analysis in the united states but ithas also long been suspected of an institutional bias in favor of projects that canadd signi cantly to its own budget allocations re ecting on the early record of

promises and conventions an approach to pre play agreements abstract i analyze how informal agreements can be sustained by moral emotions with regard to a large class of two player games specifically i assume that people feel guilty if they breach an agreement and that the guilt increases according to the degree of the harm inflicted on the other a central insight is that it is easier to sustain efficient informal agreements if actions are strategic complements than if they are strategic substitutes i complement this general insight by studying two specific cases where negotiators face uncertainty about the breach of the agreement i show that while the optimal agreement in a game with strategic substitutes must compromise on surplus maximization and efficiency the optimal agreement in a game with sufficiently strong strategic complements tends to maximize both the surplus and the probability of compliance especially if the game is symmetric

toward a sustaining production theory abstract production is commonly described as the root of wealth creation growth and progress mainline production theory ascribes this wealth generating ability to a limited number of inputs transformed into equally narrowly defined goods and services output which is not part of the official economy s market exchange or inputs not employed in their production process remain external and unaccounted for many of these unaccounted for goods and inputs are provided in households gardens subsistence production or ecological and biophysical systems through the free services of women or nature thus an alternative view of production is suggested one which views production itself as linked to the social and bio physical contexts within which it takes place this context first makes the generation of input streams the receiving of output streams and the processing of inputs by means of fund factors georgescu roegen possible as production is contextualized it becomes evident that processes which sustain input generation waste absorption and material transformation are critical to the production process these are referred to as sustaining services a sustaining production process is one which maintains sustaining services instead of destroying them it is further argued that steps toward the implementation of a sustaining production concept require a move from abstraction to material concreteness three areas of concreteness are discussed as moving from solely monetary to physical valuation criteria moving from methodological homogeneity to diversity and moving from a mystified and distanced decision making process about quantity and quality of production to one of informed participatory discourse

escaping carbon lock in this article explores the climate policy implications of the arguments made in understanding carbon lock in unruh 2000 which posited that industrial countries have become locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale carbon lock in arises through technological organizational social and institutional co evolution culminating in what was termed as techno institutional complex tic in order to resolve the climate problem an escape from the lock in condition is required however due to the self referential nature of tic escape conditions are unlikely to be generated internally and it is argued here that exogenous forces are probably required

policy making and energy infrastructure change a nigerian case study of energy governance in the electricity sector abstract this paper focusses on investigating the underlying mechanisms and influences of the policy decision making process and how it affects and impacts the governance of the nigerian energy industry and energy infrastructure provisions in depth semi structured interviews were used all interviewees had been involved directly or indirectly in energy infrastructure policy decisions in nigeria five key themes subsequently emerged as salient intra country induced influences that were affecting the governance and performance of the nigerian energy sector 1 competencies i e practical knowledge of energy policy making 2 expectations i e past present and forecasted future expectations from the energy industry 3 legislation i e institutionalized and unwritten rules procedures 4 future visions i e future vision of the energy industry energy market 5 recruiting experts i e recruiting new energy and public policy makers in addition three major inter country induced influences were also identified 1 the changing dynamics of international and foreign aid 2 the united nations sustainable development goals and 3 the paris agreements on climate change the paper concludes by highlighting the policy implications of these influences and the consequences for policy makers in the governance of the energy industry in ensuring a secured energy future

peasants or bankers the american electorate and the u s economy t he usual model of electoral reaction to economic conditions assumes the retrospective economic voter who bases expectations solely on recent economic performance or personal economic experience voter as peasant a second model assumes a sophisticated economic voter who incorporates new information about the future into personal economic expectations voter as banker using the components both retrospective and prospective of the index of consumer sentiment ics as intervening variables between economic conditions and approval we find that the prospective component fully accounts for the presidential approval time series with aggregate consumer expectations about long term business conditions in the approval equation neither the usual economic indicators not the other ics components matter moreover short term changes in consumer expectations respond more to current forecasts than to the current economy the qualitative result is a rational expectations outcome the electorate anticipates the economic future and rewards or punishes the president for economic events before they happen economics moves political behavior with hard times administrations lose support with good times they gain it we know this to be true but when we ask how by what processes the political translation of economic experience occurs the an

agreeing to pay under value disagreement reconceptualizing preference transformation in terms of pluralism with evidence from small group deliberations on climate change abstract plural values contribute to multiple arrays of expressed preferences conventionally preference convergence toward consensus among initially disagreeing decision makers is understood in terms of diminishing value differences a cogent account of consensual decision that respects non diminishing value plurality is lacking instead there is a theoretic expectation for categorical consistency between subjective values and expressed preferences valuing agents in social interaction are expected to indicate identical preference orderings only if they hold correspondingly identical categories of values this expectation precludes meaningful conceptualization of preference convergence under divisive normative dispositions an alternative framework is proposed and illustrated by results from a designed deliberative forum on australia s climate change policy data were analyzed based on q methodology results show that small group deliberations enabled effective communication between distinctive subjective positions and broadened understandings between individuals while a consensual decision gained progress no identified value discourse diminished below a significant degree observed changes in values did not run parallel to the converging preferences suggesting a decline in value preference consistency these changes nonetheless are amenable to the principle of value pluralism an alternative rationality concept is needed to account for this moral ideal within economics

electoral rules and corruption is corruption systematically related to electoral rules recent theoretical work suggests a positive answer but little is known about the data we try to address this lacuna by relating corruption to different features of the electoral system in a sample of about eighty democracies in the 1990s we exploit the cross country variation in the data as well as the time variation arising from recent episodes of electoral reform the evidence is consistent with the theoretical priors larger voting districts and thus lower barriers to entry are associated with less corruption whereas larger shares of candidates elected from party lists and thus less individual accountability are associated with more corruption individual accountability appears to be most strongly tied to personal ballots in plurality rule elections even though open party lists also seem to have some effect because different aspects roughly offset each other a switch from strictly proportional to strictly majoritarian elections only has a small negative effect on corruption jel e62 h3

comparative politics and public finance we propose a model with micropolitical foundations to contrast different political regimes compared to a parliamentary regime the institutions of a presidential congressional regime produce fewer incentives for legislative cohesion but more separation of powers these differences are reflected in the size and composition of government spending a parliamentary regime has redistribution toward a majority less underprovision of public goods and more rents to politicians a presidential congressional regime has redistribution toward powerful minorities more underprovision of public goods but less rents to politicians the size of government is smaller under a presidential regime this last prediction is consistent with cross country data

a model of electoral competition with incomplete information a model of two candidate electoral competition is developed in which voters are uncertain about the policy either candidate would implement if elected candidates simultaneously announce policy positions from which voters attempt to infer the true positions the candidates would adopt announcing a position different from the true position is costly to the winning candidate with these costs increasing as the difference between the true policy and the announced policy increases a refinement of the sequential equilibrium concept is used to describe the behavior of candidates and voters

fair bargains distributive justice and nash bargaining theory the suppes sen dominance relation is a weak criterion of impartiality in distributive justice i propose its application to nash bargaining theory the nash bargaining solution nbs is characterized by replacing the controversial independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom with an axiom embodying the suppes sen principle this allows a clear interpretation of the nbs as a fair arbitration scheme in addition the proposed characterization is more robust than the standard one with respect to variations in the domain of bargaining problems

environmental valuation and rationality economic valuation of the envi structuring the empirical model or adding ronment is disputed in part due to the number auxiliary hypotheses the presumption is of anomalies reactions to these anomalies have that consistent preferences are there just included adding new auxiliary hypotheses to the to be uncovered thus errors are mea core model or dismissing the whole undertaking surement this paper takes a third route and uses observa biases to be corrected by retions made in valuation studies to improve choice fined methods mitchell and carson theory the paper covers the information prob 1989 certainly many studies can be critlem the issue of preference formation and under icized for being of low quality still the lines the role of the social sphere in defining what development of concepts like starting becomes individually rational while the findings point bias posit ion bias question ormay not simplify theory they may help us be der bias yea saying protest bids come more realistic and to understand errors pro and part whole bias all seem very ad duced by illegitimate simplifications

uncertainties and risks in transitions to sustainable energy and the part trust might play in managing them a comparison with the current pension crisis abstract transition to a sustainable energy future carries uncertainties for all stakeholders including those who research it history does not repeat itself in detail yet comparison with analogous processes already completed or in train could give shape to how we project the future the author focuses not on the technical change required but rather on the institutional and cultural changes that would be necessary to generate the political will and the consumer demand that would drive technical change and its widespread adoption he examines a current crisis for most developed countries that of old age pension provision which though lacking a link with new technology might have similar social dynamics to an impending crisis in energy in the analysis of the pensions crisis the focus is upon both how risk has been encountered and also the part played by trust mistrust in engendering and prospectively resolving crisis between citizens and state between regulator and providers and between consumers and providers analogies are drawn from in a similar way for the impending energy crisis a refrain throughout is the dialectic between market and plan it is concluded that both the actual and the impending crisis have to be reviewed in a context of relations between states as well as relations within them

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

an institutional theory of hydraulic fracturing policy the use of high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing fracking has increased substantially over the past five years in the united states use of this drilling technology to extract natural gas from hitherto impermeable shale is expected to increase even more in coming decades two institutions integration contracts and well spacing requirements evolved to mitigate the common pool economic wastes associated with conventional oil and gas drilling u s regulators have applied these institutions to fracking however shale plays differ geologically from conventional plays and are subject to different extractive technologies we theorize that the point source pollution characteristics of conventional drilling allowed integration contracts and well space requirements to minimize local negative environmental externalities as an unintended byproduct of minimizing common pool economic wastes the non point source pollution characteristics of fracking however make these institutions insufficient to minimize negative environmental externalities associated with drilling in shale plays because the economic waste problem is different if policymakers understand the crucial differences between conventional oil and gas plays and shale plays and the drilling technologies applied to them they should be better equipped to craft fracking regulatory policies that internalize problematic externalities

a theoretical approach to deliberative valuation aggregation by mutual consent in deliberative valuation a small group of selected persons explores the values that should guide collective decisions through a process of reasoned discourse proponents argue that deliberative techniques enhance the effectiveness and perceived legitimacy of policy making by facilitating public participation this paper outlines an approach to deliberative valuation that is grounded in democratic theory social psychology and cooperative game theory emphasizing applications to the monetary valuation of environmental services the analysis suggests that deliberative groups that employ consent based choice rules may aggregate individual values in a manner that systematically departs from the additive aggregation procedures of standard cost benefit analysis

the evolution of preferences why sovereign preferences may not lead to sustainable policies and what to do about it abstract the conventional economic paradigm assumes that tastes and preferences are exogenous to the economic system and that the economic problem consists of optimally satisfying those preferences tastes and preferences usually do not change rapidly and in the short term this assumption makes sense sustainability is an inherently long term problem and in the long run it does not make sense to assume tastes and preferences are fixed and given if preferences are expected to change over time and under the influence of education advertising changing cultural assumptions etc the old assumption of consumer sovereignty is not adequate different criteria of optimality are needed how preferences change how they relate to the goal of sustainability and how they can or should be actively influenced to satisfy the new criteria needs to be determined ecological economics has emphasized the three rank ordered goals of ecological sustainability fair distribution and allocative efficiency this paper examines how preferences evolve and change over time and the implications of this for developing policies that meet these three goals in democratic societies

the values jury to aid natural resource decisions congressional legislation emphasizes that public resource allocation should reflect the values citizens assign to those resources yet information about assigned values and preferences of members of the public including economic measures of value required by decision makers is often incomplete or unavailable existing sources of information about the public s values for use in resource allocation decisions and damage assessment include existing markets public surveys including contingent valuation and public involvement each of these sources has serious limitations

relative and absolute scarcity of nature assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation abstract our aim in this essay is to identify and analyze some of the difficulties with interdisciplinary integration of economic and ecological contributions to the study of biodiversity loss we develop our analysis from a widely accepted definition of economics which is based on the concept of scarcity taking a closer look at this notion we find that economics actually limits itself to a very particular aspect of scarcity which we denote as relative scarcity we describe in what respect the economic approach towards biodiversity is based on this notion and also reflect on the specific understanding of the relation of humans and nature behind the economic approach we then turn to absolute scarcity as another notion of scarcity and show that this is not within the scope of economics but has been a theme of ecology and ecological economics we describe in which way ecological and ecological economic approaches towards biodiversity are based on the idea of absolute scarcity and also reflect on the specific understanding of the human nature relationship behind this notion of scarcity against this background we discuss the roles of economics and ecology for nature conservation we conclude that the interdisciplinary integration of ecology and economics requires a philosophical underpinning and suggest a framework for further research

electoral accountability and corruption evidence from the audits of local governments we show that political institutions affect corruption levels we use audit reports in brazil to construct new measures of political cor ruption in local governments and test whether electoral account ability affects the corruption practices of incumbent politicians we find significantly less corruption in municipalities where mayors can get reelected mayors with reelection incentives misappropriate 27 percent fewer resources than mayors without reelection incentives these effects are more pronounced among municipalities with less access to information and where the likelihood of judicial punish ment is lower overall our findings suggest that electoral rules that enhance political accountability play a crucial role in constraining politician s corrupt behavior jel d72 k42 017

selection vs accountability an experimental investigation of campaign promises in a moral hazard environment abstract we examine retrospective and prospective voting considerations in an experiment implementing a simple voting model in each period the official chooses how much rent to appropriate from a social endowment announcement of this choice is followed by an election between the official and a randomly selected challenger with the winner becoming the official in the next period we vary two features of the setting a the discount factor and b whether candidates can make costless non binding campaign promises about their behaviour if elected consistent with the model s predictions both raising the discount factor and introducing campaign promises lead to lower rent appropriation by officials and worse electoral outcomes other things equal for incumbents campaign promises despite being cheap talk have real effects promising less appropriation is rewarded by voters but breaking such promises is punished finally we find a weak positive association between campaign promises and officials subsequent behaviour

strategic communication with lying costs i study a model of strategic communication between an uninformed receiver and an informed but upwardly biased sender the sender bears a cost of lying or more broadly of misrepresenting his private information the main results show that inflated language naturally arises in this environment where the sender almost always claims to be of a higher type than he would with complete information regardless of the intensity of lying cost there is incomplete separation with some pooling on the highest messages the degree of language inflation and how much information is revealed depend upon the intensity of lying cost the analysis delivers a framework to span a class of cheap talk and verifiable disclosure games unifying the polar predictions they make under large conflicts of interest i use the model to discuss how the degree of manipulability of information can affect the trade off between delegation and communication copyright 2009 wiley blackwell

democratic accountability and retrospective voting a laboratory experiment understanding the incentives of politicians requires understanding the nature of voting behavior i conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate whether voters focus on the problem of electoral selection or if they instead focus on electoral sanctioning if voters are forward looking but uncertain about politicians unobservable characteristics then it is rational to focus on selection but doing so undermines democratic accountability because selection renders sanctioning an empty threat in contrast to rational choice predictions the experimental results indicate a strong behavioral tendency to use a retrospective voting rule additional experiments support the interpretation that retrospective voting is a simple heuristic that voters use to cope with a cognitively difficult inference and decision problem and in addition suggest that voters have a preference for accountability the results pose a challenge for theories of electoral selection and voter learning and suggest new interpretations of empirical studies of economic and retrospective voting

the aversion to lying abstract we experimentally investigate the effect of cheap talk in a bargaining game with one sided asymmetric information a seller has private information about her skill and is provided an opportunity to communicate this information to a buyer through a written message four different treatments are compared one without communication one with free form communication and two treatments with pre specified communication in the form of promises of varying strength our results suggest that individuals have an aversion towards lying about private information and that the aversion to lying increases with the size of the lie and the strength of the promise freely formulated messages lead to the fewest lies and the most efficient outcomes