We implement a risk experiment that allows for judgment errors to investigate who makes mistakes and whether it matters. The experiments are conducted with a random sample of the adult population in Rwanda, and survey data is collected on the usage of financial instruments that serve as...

Becker (1983) hypothesized that interest groups compete strategically for influence with policy makers; that important model has been assumed or ignored rather than tested. This paper builds theoretical and econometric frameworks that can test hypotheses about strategic behavior when data on...

Many of the biggest environmental policies are federal: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and so forth. Yet those federal laws leave important niches to be filled by state authorities; there are areas of environmental policy in which state governments can and should take the lead. Some...

Research related to the Endangered Species Act tends to take the presence of that policy as given and focus on issues of implementation and effects. This paper seeks to reconsider U.S. conservation policy entirely. The ESA does not protect species or ecosystems that are not endangered, and...

The dominant paradigm of conservation-reserve planning in economics is to optimize the provision of physical conservation benefits (measured in units like species protected) given a budget constraint. Large-scale biology-based priority setting implies that the value we place on biodiversity and...

In many parts of the world, deteriorating environmental conditions have led policy makers to develop policies and programs aimed at promoting conservation practices on lands devoted to agriculture. Such programs have been studied by environmental economists, but little research has been done on...