Investment and emission control under technology and pollution externalities

This paper studies incentives to develop advanced pollution abatement technology when technology may spillover across agents and pollution abatement is a public good. We are motivated by a variety of pollution control issues where solutions require the development and implementation of new pollution abatement technologies. We show that at the Nash equilibrium of a simultaneous-move game with R&D investment and emission abatement, whether the free rider effect prevails and under-investment and excess emissions occur depends on the degree of technology spillovers and the effect of R&D on the marginal abatement costs. There are cases in which, contrary to conventional wisdom, Nash equilibrium investments in emissions reductions exceed the first-best case.     

Payment schemes in infinite-horizon experimental games

We consider payment schemes in experiments that model infinite-horizon games by using random termination. We compare paying subjects cumulatively for all periods of the game; with paying subjects for the last period only; with paying for one of the periods, chosen randomly. Theoretically, assuming expected utility maximization and risk neutrality, both the cumulative and the last period payment schemes induce preferences that are equivalent to maximizing the discounted sum of utilities. The last period payment is also robust under different attitudes toward risk. In comparison, paying subjects for one of the periods chosen randomly creates a present-period bias. We further provide experimental evidence from infinitely repeated prisoners’ dilemma games that supports the above theoretical predictions.     

Cooperation in the commons

This paper delineates circumstances in which a first-best cooperative solution can be supported as a subgame perfect equilibrium in a dynamic common property renewable resource game. In a game with nonlinear resource stock effects on cost, we characterize a worst perfect equilibrium that supports cooperation for the widest range of parameter values for the discount rate, resource growth rate, harvest price, and the number of resource exploiters. The strategy profile that we propose is consistent with human behavior observed in experiments and common property resource case studies.We thank seminar participants at the University of Minnesota, the Heartland Environmental and Resource Economics Conference at Iowa State University, Keio University, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.