This review aims to improve our understanding of the implications of the insights from behavioural economics for environmental policy design. The review focuses on the question of incentive design in two broad areas — risk, conflict and cooperation; and mechanism design. A number of lessons...

We report the findings of a unique nation-wide experiment to price access to U.S. public lands. In 2004, the U.S. Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act mandated the creation of a new annual pass to cover all federal recreation sites that charge an entrance or access fee. Our task was to...

Herein, we examine the optimal contract design when social norms have a disutility on landowners' participation in payment for environmental services programs. We find that a regulator can use less powerful monetary incentives to induce landowners to retire more land when the regulator appeals...

The Theory of the Second Best implies that any country with less-than-ideal resources can lose from international trade. Recently it has been suggested this means the South (poor countries) are better off suppressing trade with the North, especially trade in natural resource products, since the...

Trade has become the main mode of transport for many invasive species including diseases and agricultural pests. Most species are brought to their new homes unintentionally, which constitute a market failure rooted in international trade. Unless it is practical to drive invasion risk to zero,...

The 1998 Kyoto protocol signalled a new earnestness of international intent toward addressing the perceived risk of climate change. Kyoto demands that developed nations turn their economies so as to hit differentiated, sub-1990 level carbon emission targets within the next decade or so. But when...