applying behavioral economics to public policy in canada behavioural economics incorporates ideas from psychology sociology and neuroscience to better predict how individuals make long term decisions often the ideas adopted include present or inattention bias both potentially leading to suboptimal outcomes but these models also point to opportunities for effective low cost government policies that can have meaningful positive effects on people s long term well being the last decade has been marked by a growing interest from governments the world over in using behavioural economics to inform policy decisions this is true of canada as well in this paper we discuss the increasingly important role behavioural economics plays in canadian public policy we first contextualize government policies that have incorporated insights from behavioural economics by outlining a collection of models of intertemporal choice we then present examples of public policy initiatives that are based upon findings in the field placing particular emphasis on canadian initiatives we also document future opportunities challenges and limitations

legitimizing farmers new knowledge learning and practices through communicative action application of an agro environmental policy this article examines the role of communication in the process that guides economic actors to integrate the moral obligations implied by adopting sustainability principles in their action choices and to reexamine their practices we analyze two approaches to implementing agro environmental measures that encourage farmers to preserve water resources verbal interactions between farmers and agricultural advisors who are part of these policy programs are analyzed drawing on jurgen habermas s theory of communicative action the discourse analysis used here shows that communicative action encouraged participants to reexamine the validity of the technical experiential and normative knowledge that legitimized their reasons for acting this study brings to light the fact that in the context of a business primarily oriented towards making a profit committing to sustainable development does not only operate in technical terms such a commitment also requires collective validation of the effectiveness of alternative farming practices

ecosystem services from eye opening metaphor to complexity blinder abstract what started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution the metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead indeed combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project by project without major institutional change the simplicity of the stock flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament the ecosystem services approach can be a part of a larger solution but its dominance in our characterization of our situation and the solution is blinding us to the ecological economic and political complexities of the challenges we actually face

the role of application assistance and information in college decisions results from the h r block fafsa experiment growing concerns about low awareness and take up rates for government support programs like college financial aid have spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility we present results from a randomized field experiment in which low income individuals receiving tax preparation help were also offered immediate assistance and a streamlined process to complete the free application for federal student aid fafsa for themselves or their children treated participants were also provided with aid estimates that were compared against tuition cost amounts for nearby colleges the combined assistance and information treatment substantially increased fafsa submissions and ultimately the likelihood of college attendance persistence and aid receipt in particular high school seniors whose parents received the treatment were 8 percentage points more likely to have completed two years of college going from 28 to 36 during the first three years following the experiment families who received aid information but no assistance with the fafsa did not experience improved outcomes the findings suggest many other opportunities for using personal assistance to increase participation in programs that require filling out forms to become eligible jel codes i2 h4 j24 copyright 2012 oxford university press

deliberative monetary valuation in search of a democratic and value plural approach to environmental policy the use of deliberative methods to assess environmental values in monetary terms has been motivated by the potential for small group discussion to help with preference formation and the inclusion of non economic values in this review two broad approaches are identified preference economisation and preference moralisation the former is analytical concentrates upon issues of poor respondent cognition and produces a narrow conception of value linked to utilitarianism the latter emphasises political legitimacy appeals to community values and tends to privilege arguments made in the public interest both approaches are shown to embrace forms of value convergence which undermine the prospects for value pluralism as a result exclusion and predefinition of values dominates current practice in order to maintain democratic credentials the importance attributed to monetary value needs to be left as an open question to be addressed as part of a process determining an agreement to pay to this end we identify a discourse based approach as a third way consistent with the democratic and value plural potential of deliberative monetary valuation

deliberative monetary valuation dmv issues in combining economic and political processes to value environmental change abstract this paper explores and contrasts the different social processes of valuation now appearing as economic means of valuing the environment monetary valuation via stated preference approaches has been criticised for assuming well formed and informed preferences and excluding a range of sustainability concerns such as rights fairness and equity deliberative monetary valuation dmv in small groups is a novel hybrid of economic and political approaches which raises the prospect of a transformative and moralising experience critics of standard contingent valuation approaches have advocated this as offering a way forward however there has been a lack of clarity as to the means of obtaining values the expected outcomes and their role moving to group settings of deliberation raises concepts of social willingness to pay and accept which are distinct from an aggregate of individual value although this does not seem to have been widely recognised a new classification of values is presented appropriate to the literature trying to merge economic and political processes values associated with the individual may be exchange values charitable contributions or fair prices while social values can be speculative expressive or arbitrated the use of dmv is shown to result in different values due to variations in the institutional setting and process of valuation

background inequality and differential participation in deliberative valuation lessons from small group discussions on forest conservation in colombia abstract deliberative monetary valuation dmv methods have been proposed as a more democratic alternative to traditional contingent valuation methods cvm for natural resource decision making these deliberative methods are subject to criticisms one issue of concern is that the socio economic inequalities among members of the deliberative group may severely impede communication and consequently distort deliberative outcomes to examine such possibility we applied the deliberative methodology in a case study of forest conservation in colombia we found that those individuals who assumed social environmental leadership positions tended to dominate group discussion nevertheless the variations in the capacity to engage in group deliberation were better explained by participants personal characteristics than external constraints or group pressure also there was little evidence that leadership and domination in group deliberation significantly influenced participants stated wtp we conclude that dmv is vulnerable to the background inequalities among group members the democratic potential of deliberative methods should be critically examined in terms of the capacity to communicate effectively and equally

on the learning and stability of mixed strategy nash equilibria in games of strategic substitutes abstract this paper analyzes the learning and stability of mixed strategy nash equilibria in games of strategic substitutes gss complementing recent work done in the case of strategic complements gsc mixed strategies in gss are of particular interest because it is well known that such games need not exhibit pure strategy nash equilibria first we establish bounds on the strategy space which indicate where randomizing behavior may occur in equilibrium second we show that mixed strategy nash equilibria are generally unstable under a wide variety of learning rules multiple examples are given

setting the limits to extraction a biophysical approach to mining activities abstract while the mining industry is steadfastly committed to the goal of increasing extraction of minerals the failure to recognize the existence of biophysical constraints to extraction results in massive degradation to socio ecological systems in this paper we propose an innovative approach for analyzing mineral extraction which links the use and management of natural resources by means of the stock flow fund service model developed by georgescu roegen mining is a productive process that not only depletes minerals ores but also affects other natural resources that are needed to maintain life supporting processes over time the central claim is the need of recognizing the existence of biophysical limits to extraction in order to manage natural resources as irreplaceable providers of ecosystem services by providing a new conceptualization for operationalizing the ecosystem services approach based on the stock flow fund service model we intend to challenge the current extractivist narrative that assumes unregulated practices monetary indicators technological advancements and substitutable resources we argue that limits to mining activities should depend on a biophysical evaluation of the effects of these activities on the environment furthermore social deliberation is required to determine whether extraction should occur and to what extent it is socially acceptable while still maintaining the integrity of socio ecological systems

deliberative monetary valuation dmv and democratic valuation dv a response to bartkowski and lienhoop 2017 abstract bartkowski and lienhoop 2017 comment on the dv approach which i proposed in an earlier issue they conclude that dmv overcomes some flaws of conventional stated preference sp methods addresses many of my concerns and at the same time avoids some of the problems generated by dv several of their comments are debatable a closer look at dmv in comparison with dv and conventional sp methods shows that bartkowski and lienhoop s dmv approach addresses only one out of six major issues with conventional sp methods the lack of opportunities for group discussion my conclusion therefore remains unaffected due to the many technical issues with measuring individual willingness to pay wtp valuations based on majority voting principles are not only more transparent and more democratically legitimate than conventional sp or dmv they may also produce superior proxies for aggregated individual wtp

the viability of local payments for watershed services empirical evidence from matiguas nicaragua abstract using both qualitative and quantitative approaches this article investigates the under researched demand side of locally financed payments for environmental services pes it assesses downstream users willingness to pay wtp for improved tap water quality in a setting where upstream landowners are clearing watersheds the research findings are indicative of a considerable wtp for improved drinking water services and a definite local awareness of upstream downstream interdependencies suggesting potential for successful pes contingent valuation cv however found a substantially lower wtp under a pes scenario than under an alternative scenario involving infrastructure investments the qualitative research angle indicates that the feasibility of a locally financed pes system may have been negatively affected by the prevailing discursive framing of agricultural externalities and entitlements raising issues about the fairness of such payments moreover low levels of mutual trust were found to undermine the credibility of the pes framework these results confirm that institutional failures contribute to environmental degradation and that pes should not be viewed as a market panacea transcending the local institutional context but rather as a potentially complementary instrument within a broader rearrangement of environmental governance

disaggregated economic impact analysis incorporating ecological and social trade offs and techno institutional context a case from the western ghats of india economic valuation of ecosystem benefits and their aggregation in a benefit cost analysis bca framework is the norm in mainstream environmental economics but valuation and bca have also attracted criticisms internal criticisms point to the absence of alternative scenarios in valuation overlooking of ecological trade offs and dis services and inattention to context others criticize aggregation across diverse stakeholders and the problem of non monetizable benefits and dismiss bca as fatally flawed they suggest approaches such as deliberative decision making and multi criteria analysis we propose a middle path that uses the strengths of economic analysis for decision support while avoiding the pitfalls we disaggregate economic impacts by stakeholder groups link ecosystem changes to benefits as well as dis benefits and examine how socio technological context shapes the magnitude of economic impact we illustrate this approach by studying the impact of creating the biligiri rangaswamy temple wildlife sanctuary in the western ghats forests of southern india our analysis shows that while some stakeholders are net beneficiaries others are net losers changes in forest rights irrigation technologies and ecosystem dynamics influence the magnitude of benefits and sometimes convert gainers into losers such disaggregated analysis can provide useful information for deliberative decision making and important academic insights on how economic value is generated

strategic complements and substitutes and potential games abstract we show that games of strategic complements or substitutes with aggregation are pseudo potential games the upshot is that they possess nash equilibria in pure strategies ne even if the strategy sets are not convex and that various dynamic processes converge to ne in particular ne exist in cournot oligopoly with indivisibilities in production our notion of aggregation is quite general and enables us to take a unified view of several disparate models

social multi criteria evaluation methodological foundations and operational consequences in order to address contemporary issues economics and decision sciences need to expand their empirical relevance by introducing more and more realistic thus more complex assumptions in their models one of the most interesting research directions in the field of public economics is the attempt to introduce political constraints interest groups and collusion effects explicitly j j laffont incentives and political economy 2000 the main argument developed here is the proposal of the concept of social multi criteria evaluation smce as a possible useful framework for the application of social choice to the difficult policy problems of our millennium where as stated by funtowicz and ravetz facts are uncertain values in dispute stakes high and decisions urgent this paper starts from the following main questions 1 why social multi criteria evaluation 2 how should such an approach be developed the foundations of smce are set up by referring to concepts from complex system theory and philosophy such as reflexive complexity post normal science and incommensurability to give some operational guidelines on the application of smce basic questions to be answered are 1 how is it possible to deal with technical incommensurability 2 how can we deal with the issue of social incommensurability to answer these questions using theoretical considerations and lessons learned from real world case studies is the main objective of the present article

a sparsity based model of bounded rationality this article defines and analyzes a sparse max operator which is a less than fully attentive and rational version of the traditional max operator the agent builds as economists do a simplified model of the world which is sparse considering only the variables of first order importance his stylized model and his resulting choices both derive from constrained optimization still the sparse max remains tractable to compute moreover the induced outcomes reflect basic psychological forces governing limited attention the sparse max yields a behavioral version of basic chapters of the microeconomics textbook consumer demand and competitive equilibrium i obtain a behavioral version of marshallian and hicksian demand arrow debreu competitive equilibrium the slutsky matrix the edgeworth box roy s identity and so on the slutsky matrix is no longer symmetric nonsalient prices are associated with anomalously small demand elasticities because the consumer exhibits nominal illusion in the edgeworth box the offer curve is a two dimensional surface rather than a one dimensional curve as a result different aggregate price levels correspond to materially distinct competitive equilibria in a similar spirit to a phillips curve the arrow debreu welfare theorems typically do not hold this framework provides a way to assess which parts of basic microeconomics are robust and which are not to the assumption of perfect maximization jel codes d01 d03 d11 d51

using differences in knowledge across neighborhoods to uncover the impacts of the eitc on earnings we develop a new method of estimating the impacts of tax policies that uses areas with little knowledge about the policy s marginal incentives as counterfactuals for behavior in the absence of the policy we apply this method to characterize the impacts of the earned income tax credit eitc on earnings using administrative tax records covering all eitc eligible lers from 19962009 we begin by developing a proxy for local knowledge about the eitc schedule the degree of sharp bunching at the exact income level that maximizes eitc refunds by individuals who report self employment income the degree of self employed sharp bunching varies signi cantly

economic inequality and the value of nature abstract understanding what influences the value of nature is crucial for informing environmental policy from a sustainability perspective economic valuation should not only seek to determine a society s willingness to pay for environmental goods to devise an efficient allocation of scarce resources but should also account for distributional effects to ensure justice yet how economic inequality affects the value of non market environmental goods remains understudied combining recently developed theoretical results with empirical evidence this commentary shows that more equal societies have a higher valuation for environmental public goods and that non market benefits of environmental policy accrue over proportionally to poorer households on this ground we discuss implications for environmental valuation management and policy making and identify a number of fruitful areas for future research we conclude that environmental valuation should explicitly account for economic inequality and that encompassing assessments of the distributional effects of environmental policies must consider the distribution of non market environmental benefits

economic experiments for collective action in the kyrgyz republic lessons for payments for ecosystem services pes abstract payments for ecosystem service pes schemes have become increasingly popular in attempting to promote ecological stewardship and conservation behaviour through provisioning of economic incentives often as market inspired transactions the scholarship and empirical application of pes schemes has tended to focus on contract design and conditionality of payments rather than more fundamentally examining whether incentives do indeed influence behaviour in desired ways in this paper a set of incentive framed treatments are introduced to existing collective action institutions promoting common pool resource management in order to explore the effects of incentive provision on the propensity to participate in the maintenance of collectively owned irrigation canals the experiments take place in the kyrgyz republic characterized by the historic transition of nomadic collective traditions subsequent soviet rule to advances towards democracy market integration and the first pes pilot in the country in the incentive treatments provided we reveal the close interplay between the framing of incentives the influence of village leaders mobilizing collective activity and social norms of reciprocity trust and enforcement in mobilizing collective work each framed case study exhibits a unique configuration of individual motivations group norms and other regarding rationalities providing critical insight into this new frontier of pes implementation

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

governing uncertain and unknown effects of genetically modified crops this paper analyzes the capabilities of three different governance regimes for adequately handling uncertain and unknown effects of genetically modified gm crops adequate handling requires the development of sound procedures for identification of uncertainty and ignorance ui gm crops are produced by private firms and the government decides whether the crops should be marketed gr2 and gm crops are produced and the government decides whether the crops should be marketed gr3 the effect of bringing the civil society into the decision making process is also analyzed gr3 will be stronger in cooperative adaptation and communicative rationality than gr2 public research organizations have fewer conflicts of interest with the government than private firms and academic norms are important difficulties in proving harm and identifying the responsible firm will make gr1 weak in cooperative adaptation and communicative rationality

an institutional analysis of methods for environmental appraisal abstract this paper focuses on a set of issues when choosing between methods for environmental appraisal approaches like cost benefit analysis contingent valuation multicriteria analysis and deliberative methods are based on very different assumptions concerning the characteristics of environmental resources the capacities of the individuals involved and the role the methods play in framing the process the present paper views environmental appraisal methods as institutional structures they are seen as rules concerning a who should participate and in which capacity b what is considered data and which form data should take and c rules about how a conclusion is reached specifically the choice of method defines the logic of the appraisal process and next influences the output while cost benefit analysis is based on the assumption of individual rationality deliberative methods assume that individuals can act according to social rationality the first part of the paper is devoted to clarifying what institutions are and their role in the valuation process second the main features of environmental or ecosystem services and the demands they raise for decision making are described a general framework for evaluating appraisal methods is then developed finally this structure is elaborated in more detail as a basis for deciding over the choices of methods in the case of evaluating ecosystem services a set of unresolved issues are identified especially related to how the choice of appraisal methods themselves should be instituted

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

behavioral economics and public policy 102 beyond nudging the united states despite its affluence faces a number of daunting policy challenges we rank last among 16 wealthy peers in life expectancy infant mortality and obesity and have taken very little action on climate change despite the extremity of the threat it poses not only to future generations but even those alive today 1

cost benefit analysis values wellbeing and ethics an indigenous worldview analysis abstract in cost benefit analysis cba values are often invoked to discuss maximization strategies that produce the highest state of social wellbeing expressed in terms of utility also the conception of preferences is what individuals reveal as contributing to their wellbeing however as cba ignores the empirically testable facts of how preferences are constituted practical question arises about the legitimacy of the values themselves in contributing to welfare maximization this paper seeks to uncover the meaning of wellbeing from lessons drawn from an extensive field study conducted with a group of indigenous people in malaysia between 2008 and 2011 it concludes that despite decades of conceptual and analytical refinement the price based cba is still limited in the practical world of evaluation because of the real difficulties it encountered in assessing the non use and indirect use components of environmental assets that are non subjectively distinguishable or are not traded in the market also in ignoring individuals value judgment and the various meanings of wellbeing from different socio cultural backgrounds cba tends to lead to welfare distortions to address these theoretical and practical deficiencies it is necessary to embrace the heterodox school of ecological economics focusing on the social cultural and biophysical aspects of valuation processes

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

economics and identity this paper considers how identity a person s sense of self affects economic outcomes we incorporate the psychology and sociology of identity into an economic model of behavior in the utility function we propose identity is associated with different social categories and how people in these categories should behave we then construct a simple game theoretic model showing how identity can affect individual interactions the paper adapts these models to gender discrimination in the workplace the economics of poverty and social exclusion and the household division of labor in each case the inclusion of identity substantively changes conclusions of previous economic analysis

beyond homo economicus evidence from experimental economics environmental policies are generally based on a model of the human actor taken from neoclassical economic theory this paper reports on laboratory experiments suggesting weaknesses in this model and describes alternative models correcting these weaknesses one finding is that economic actors tend to be hyperbolic as opposed to exponential discounters who discount the immediate future at a higher rate than the more distant future another finding is that economic actors are not self regarding but rather in many circumstances are strong reciprocators who come to strategic interactions with a propensity to cooperate respond to cooperative behavior by maintaining or increasing cooperation and respond to free riders by retaliating against the offenders even at a personal cost and even when there is no reasonable expectation that future personal gains will flow from such retaliation we discuss some implications for policy analysis 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

on the problem of achieving efficiency and equity intergenerationally the paper compares two approaches to the problem of achieving the social goals of sustainability and intergenerational efficiency the first is a separated approach where the results of standard benefit cost analysis are later combined with intergenerational equity considerations the second in the tradition of institutional design is an integrated approach where efficiency and equity considerations are combined from the start it ap pears that several well known problems with dis counting can be avoided or mitigated by the second approach jel 02

prospects for a heterodox economics of the environment and sustainability this paper introduces a special issue on heterodox economics of the environment and sustainability at present humanity faces several challenges such as resource scarcity biodiversity loss and climate change and yet we would argue contributions from traditional heterodox schools of thought such as post keynesianism marxism and to a lesser extent institutionalism have had relatively little to say about them instead the economic analysis of environmental issues has been dominated by approaches inspired by neoclassical economics and latterly by ecological economics the special issue is part of an effort to stimulate more heterodox work on the environment and to explore connections between existing groups of scholars particularly between ecological and heterodox economists

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

beyond rationality towards reasonableness enriching the theoretical foundation of deliberative monetary valuation economic valuation is often deemed an important source of information for land use decisions stated preference sp methods are a particularly potent class of economic valuation methods but they are also particularly controversial in response to accumulating criticism of sp deliberative monetary valuation dmv has been proposed as an alternative approach and has gained considerable attention in recent years however being a combination of elements from two theories neoclassical welfare economics and theory of deliberative democracy it lacks a convincing consistent theoretical foundation in our paper we propose some clarifying adjustments regarding rationality assumptions and aggregation issues by drawing upon the work of amartya sen we find that many of his ideas lead to a harmonisation of dmv s theoretical foundations e g meta rankings of preferences impartial spectator and the plurality of impartial reasons

democracy and valuation a reply to schlapfer 2016 abstract this paper is a critical appraisal of schlapfer s 2016 proposal of a democratic valuation dv methodology to value public goods while we appreciate attempts to address the shortcomings of conventional stated preference techniques we have some reservations regarding dv our paper critically reviews the following characteristics of the proposed methodology i referendum format as decision making mechanism ii single dimensionality in the description of the policy issue to be valued and iii preference formation through provision of detailed information finally we calibrate democratic valuation against another alternative to conventional stated preference approaches namely deliberative monetary valuation dmv we argue that dmv addresses many of schlapfer s concerns regarding stated preference techniques and at the same time avoids some of the problems generated by dv

revealing ecological processes or imposing social rationalities the politics of bounding and measuring ecosystem services ecosystem service es frameworks have been developed to characterize and model the relationships between ecological processes and human benefits some argue that these relationships should be specified through expert derived analytical i e top down frameworks in order to organize accumulated knowledge and create ready made framings for communities on the ground in contrast arguments for the participatory construction of es assessments emphasize the need for place sensitive and deliberative i e bottom up approaches in this paper we draw on a novel water planning exercise in new zealand to examine the tensions that arise when expert produced categories intersect with diverse stakeholder worldviews and aspirations expert derived es categories and analyses intervene in local valuation contexts in a range of ways narrowing the scope of which ecological processes might be considered as relevant or legitimate bounding as well as affecting how these processes are described and compared measuring the practices of bounding and measuring es in scientific and planning assessments should thus be conceptualized as involving political work and not just scientific judgment this reframes the role of ecological science and scientists in es debates and this presents cautions as well as opportunities for future es work relating to policy

deliberative monetary valuation and the evidence for a new value theory economists concerned with validity are combining stated preference methods with participatory deliberation to address on going criticism deliberative monetary valuation dmv uses formal methods of deliberation to express values for environmental change in monetary terms however the results have begun to define different realms of value reflecting pluralism in public concern over environmental change reviewing empirical dmv studies evidences a range of issues regarded as external to economics and the validity of its methods issues which are typically kept at arms length by most environmental economists namely multiple values incommensurability and lexicographic preferences social justice fairness and non human values

institutions and the environment the case for a political socio economy of environmental conflicts this article presents a sympathetic but critical examination of institutional ecological economics iee a heterodox body of work on environmental governance as developed separately by j paavola and a vatn we highlight the theoretical limitations of iee related to two issues the causes of the emergence of environmental conflicts and the logics driving their regulation these limitations are all related to the underlying theories of institutional change in which power and legitimacy based explanations are confusedly combined both authors develop a normative perspective in which legitimacy becomes the main concern we argue that this perspective leads to contradictions in their respective approaches and provides no or only partial insights into the conditions of the emergence and regulation of environmental conflicts we finally highlight the conceptual adjustments inspired from classical marxism and regulation theory that in our view are needed to deal more adequately with these issues

democratic valuation dv using majority voting principles to value public services the now dominant survey approaches to value public services remain contentious a common explanation is that stated preferences are generally difficult to measure i argue that the key problems of the dominant survey approaches can be explained more specifically by their ambition to measure individuals maximum willingness to pay wtp to estimate wtp researchers need to ask questions involving counterfactual prices to specify doubtful implementation rules and to aggregate preferences in a way that is inconsistent with political rights the procedures engender problems with scenario credibility incentive compatibility adequate information provision and democratic legitimacy as an alternative to the standard stated preference paradigm i propose a democratic valuation approach dv dv measures the exchange value of public services in the political domain in terms of the aggregate valuation implied by the median preferred expenditure level for public services the blueprint for survey design is the public finance referendum with multiple proposals i suggest that empirically straightforward and democratically legitimate exchange values may be a more powerful input to public policy decisions than theoretically correct but empirically problematic estimates of mean willingness to pay

the dynamic instability of dispersed price equilibria abstract we adopt an evolutionary framework to explain price dispersion as a time varying phenomenon by developing a finite strategy analogue of the burdett and judd 1983 price dispersion model we show that all dispersed price equilibria are unstable under the class of perturbed best response dynamics instead numerical simulations using the logit dynamic show that price dispersion manifests itself as a limit cycle we verify that limit cycles persist even when the finite strategy model approaches the original continuous strategy model for a particularly simple case of the model we prove the existence of a limit cycle

learning mixed equilibria we study learning processes for finite strategic form games in which players use the history of past play to forecast play in the current period in a generalization of fictitious play we assume only that players asymptotically choose best responses to the historical frequencies of opponents past play this implies that if the stage game strategies converge the limit is a nash equilibrium in the basic model plays seems unlikely to converge to a mixed strategy equilibrium but such convergence is natural when the stage game is perturbed in the manner of harsanyi s purification theorem journal of economic literature classification number c72

the crowding out of complex social goods the valuation of ecosystem services to inform natural resource management and development has gained acceptance in many arenas yet contemporary economic valuation is constrained to the appraisal of simple goods that generate benefits that accrue to individuals neglecting complex goods that generate benefits that accrue to society more broadly methodological barriers to the valuation of complex social goods have led to their frequent omission from natural resource management deliberations the prevailing valuation paradigm that focuses on simple individual goods may erode conservation efforts by crowding out the institutions and behaviours that support socially constructed ecosystem service values erosion of these values ultimately harms the environment and society as a whole the institutionalisation of appropriate methods for estimating the value of complex social goods alongside existing methods for valuing simple individual goods within international conservation development and policy making discourses is therefore an important evolution for sustainable natural resource management

preference refinement in deliberative choice experiments for ecosystem service valuation choice experiments have gained considerable popularity in ecosystem service valuation in a one shot survey respondents are faced with a strenuous task asking them to discover and monetize their preferences for often unfamiliar ecosystem services in a previously unknown hypothetical market situation we present a deliberative choice experiment that aims to generate well rationalized value estimates for policy advice two aspects of deliberation discussion and time to reflect are examined in terms of their effect on preference refinement we find more comprehensive choice motives after deliberation as well as indications for preference adjustment and a slight increase in choice certainty jel q51 q57

optimal defaults and active decisions defaults often have a large influence on consumer decisions we identify an overlooked but practical alternative to defaults requiring individuals to make an explicit choice for themselves we study such active decisions in the context of 401 k saving we find that compelling new hires to make active decisions about 401 k enrollment raises the initial fraction that enroll by 28 percentage points relative to a standard opt in enrollment procedure producing a savings distribution three months after hire that would take 30 months to achieve under standard enrollment we also present a model of 401 k enrollment and derive conditions under which the optimal enrollment regime is automatic enrollment i e default enrollment standard enrollment i e default non enrollment or active decisions i e no default and compulsory choice active decisions are optimal when consumers have a strong propensity to procrastinate and savings preferences are highly heterogeneous financial illiteracy however favors default enrollment over active decision enrollment

nobel lecture the economic way of looking at behavior an important step in extending the traditional theory of individual rational choice to analyze social issues beyond those usually considered by economists is to incorporate into the theory a much richer class of attitudes preferences and calculations while this approach to behavior builds on an expanded theory of individual choice it is not mainly concerned with individuals it uses theory at the micro level as a powerful tool to derive implications at the group or macro level the lecture describes the approach and illustrates it with examples drawn from my past and current work