Using the contingent valuation method in developing countries to value mortality risk reduction is particularly challenging because of the low level of education of the respondents. In this paper, we examine the effect of training the respondents regarding probabilities and risk reductions, in...

Much evidence suggests that people are concerned with their relative consumption, i.e., their consumption in relation to the consumption of others. Yet, the social costs of conspicuous consumption have so far played little (or no) role in savings-based indicators of sustainable development. The...

We show that Rand et al. (2012) and Rand et al. (2014)—who argue that cooperation is intuitive—provide an incorrect interpretation of their own data. They make the mistake of inferring intuition from relative decision times alone, without taking into account absolute decision times. We...

Are fairness concerns of relevance to environmental economics and, if so, are they sufficiently structured to improve analysis in this field? On both of these questions, we answer in the affirmative, arguing that people’s fairness views are based on both general rules and the context, where...

Since the analysis of a self-enforcing agreement by Barrett (1994) it has been clear that the ratio between the slopes of the marginal cost and marginal benefit functions is conclusive for stability of self-enforcing agreements. For example Finus and Rundshagen (1998) stated: 'it turns out that...

Empirical evidence suggests that people’s risk-perceptions are often systematically biased. This paper develops a simple framework to analyse public policy when this is the case. Expected utility (well-being) is shown to depend on both objective and subjective risks. The latter are important...

We report results from a laboratory experiment that allows us to test the incentive compatibility hypothesis of hypothetical referenda used in CV studies through the public or private provision of information messages. One of the main methodological issues about hypothetical markets regards...

We develop a model that relates self-control and conflict identification to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas. As predicted, we find in a laboratory public goods experiment a robust association between stronger self-control and higher levels of cooperation. This means that there is...

There is growing interest in the role of pro-social motivation in public service delivery. In general, economists no longer question whether people have social preferences, but ask how and when such preferences will influence their economic and social decisions. Apart from revealing that...

We discuss the design of stated preference (SP) surveys in light of findings in behavioral economics such as context dependence of preferences, learning, and differences between revealed and normative preferences. More specifically, we discuss four different areas: (i) revealed and normative...