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Water Science and Policy Center

Seminar Presentation

Dr. Stefan Ambec

"Pareto-Improving Regulations to Protect the Commons: an Experimental Investigation"
(Paper co-authored with Alexis Garapin, Laurent Muller and Carine Sebi)

Abstract: We test in a laboratory experiment three regulations imposed on a common-pool resource game: an access fee and subsidy scheme, transferable quotas and non-transferable quotas. Theory predicts that they all reduce resource use from free access to the same target level without hurting users. We find that the objective set by the regulator is reached on average with less certainty with fees than the other regulation tools. The fee scheme tends to better sort out the most efficient users but leads to more inequality. All regulations fail to make every user better off, the two market-based instruments still doing better than the non-transferable quotas.

About the Presenter: Stefan Ambec is a researcher in the Toulouse School of Economics and a member of LERNA, a research center in environmental economics, and invited professor at the University of Lausanne. He holds a Master in Econometrics from the University of Toulouse and a PhD in Economics from the University of Montreal. His main research interests are in economic theory, environmental economics and industrial organization. His works have been published several academic journals including American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Canadian Journal of Economics, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economics Theory and Social Choice and Welfare.