We study post-harvest decisions among Tanzanian rice farmers. Risk and time preference experiments are used to understand post-harvest decisions. In particular, we investigate storage and processing decisions, which according to our study can increase income by more than 50 per cent, but also introduce risk and time delays. Experimentally elicited risk and time preferences are statistically significant in explaining these post-harvest decisions. Impatient farmers are less likely to store paddy, and risk-averse farmers are less likely both to process and store paddy for future sales.

Response time is a possible indicator of the cognitive processes employed by choice experiment participants when making choices. The decision-making literature suggests a positive correlation between slower response time and rational thinking, which is consistent with standard theories of decision-making. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between response time and respondents’ choices. We disentangle preference and willingness-to-pay estimates and explore whether response time sheds light on these aspects.

Policymakers have little experience regarding designing the right levels of pricing for plastic bags. Prices for bags are generally set low and are largely a symbolic reminder to consumers of the environmental concerns attributed to plastic bag use. The ineffectiveness of charging for bags in the long term, in countries such as South Africa, makes it imperative that we map the demand curve. Getting the price “right” depends on the size of the externality. Charging for plastic bags is therefore an effective nudging policy.

As the residential sector is becoming increasingly important in the total energy consumption and appliance ownership is a significant but under-examined driver, this study investigates the relationship between income inequality and appliance ownership using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). We find that income inequality has negative impacts on appliance penetration rate across specifications, except for the initial development stage.

We investigate the behavioural responses of resource users to two policy interventions: sanctioned quotas and information provisioning. We do so in a context in which multiple resources (pastures and wild animal stocks) are connected and could substantially and drastically deteriorate as a result of management. We perform an experimental study among communities that are managing common pool wildlife in Zimbabwe.

Cooperation in public goods games increases in the presence of between-group competition. In this study, we validate the effect of between-group competition in a different social dilemma, a resource appropriation game. Unlike the voluntary contributions setting, group performance in this game increases with the exercise of a passive choice: not appropriating units in an open-access resource. We conducted an incentivized experiment using 276 undergraduate students in which groups of four subjects played a resource appropriation game.

"Chapter 13: (Real) behavior meets (real) institutions: towards a research agenda on the study of the commons" in A Research Agenda for New Institutional Economics. Elgar Research Agendas. Edited by:Claude Ménard and Mary M. Shirley. 2018.

Abstract Chapter 13: