Markus Ohndorf

We investigate the efficiency of Coasean bargaining when restrictions are placed on the set of feasible bargaining outcomes. When property rights are costly to (defend) appropriate, we find bargaining restrictions may be Pareto superior to unconstrained voluntary exchange. Under cost uncertainty over the externality, we show an efficient configurat...

Enacting market-based environmental regulation, such as emissions taxes and cap-and-trade programs, often create rents that are contested by agents. In this paper, we create a framework that compares social welfare from alternative market-based environmental policy instruments under the presence of rent seeking. We show that, contrary to the common...

We provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of individual offset behavior, with environmental offsets as a specific form of voluntary public good provision. While existing theoretical models on the voluntary provision of public goods usually focus exclusively on single motivations for individual contributions, we explicitly account for various...

An updated, published version of this paper can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106479

A published version of this paper is available at: doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2021.102457 We investigate self-serving information avoidance by consumers when revela-tion is stochastic and the revealed information is potentially erroneous. Our for-mal considerations based on a cognitive dissonance model suggest that informationavoidance depends on the p...

The severity of extreme weather events is increasing due to climate change. While industrialized nations have historically contributed the most to greenhouse gas emissions and are thus considered the primary polluters, the adverse impacts of climate change are disproportionately felt in low-income countries with limited capacity to cope. These regi...

Zusammenfassung Die Marktperspektive betrachtet Märkte als zentrale Institution und Preisrelationen als zentrale Hebel für klimafreundliches Leben. Strukturen werden als Regeln für das Handeln auf Märkten verstanden. Deshalb braucht es Rahmenbedingungen, die Märkte regulieren, sodass das Verursacherprinzip wirksam wird: Wer Emissionen verursacht, m...

Small alpine lakes are highly sensitive to global warming and human influence, which can affect the ecological integrity of these freshwaters. However, the response of lakes is variable and knowledge about potential impacts on related ecosystem services is insufficient. The project CLAIMES (Climate response of alpine lakes: Resistance variability a...

We report the results of an experiment on willful information avoidance regarding measures to address Covid-19. In the experiment, participants choose between two options, each associated with a contribution to the Corona Fund of the Red Cross USA and a payment to the participant. Depending on the treatment, either the participants’ payoff, the don...

Unlabelled: We theoretically and experimentally investigate the effect of self-serving information avoidance on moral bias in democratic and individual decisions in the context of climate change mitigation. Subjects choose between two allocations that differ in payoffs and contributions to climate change mitigation. We vary the observability of th...

Zusammenfassung Kapitel 24 ist die Einleitung zu Teil 5, der die Hintergrundbewertungen für Kapitel 2 liefert. Teil 5 nimmt eine detaillierte Bestandsaufnahme von Theorien vor, die in einem weiten Sinne Wandel untersuchen. In den darauffolgenden Kapiteln werden die Marktperspektive (Kapitel 25), die Innovationsperspektive (Kapitel 26), die Bereitst...

In view of the increasing demand for ecosystem services (ESs) and rising pressures from global change on mountain lakes, sustainable management strategies are increasingly needed. However, integrative assessments of ESs provided by small mountain lakes are lacking. This study adopted an integrative ES valuation perspective, applying multi-criteria...

We report the results of an experiment to systematically investigate the influence of the market setting in credence good markets on opportunism in the sellers' decisions. We find that, even with the extreme information asymmetry in these markets, sellers' decisions made under a direct sales regime are significantly more selfish than purchase recom...

We present the results of an experiment to investigate the determinants of ignoring costless information on measures to address Covid-19. Subjects could choose between two options that differed in their contribution to the Corona Fund of the Red Cross USA and in their own payoffs. Depending on the treatment, either the own-payoff consequences, the...

We investigate self-serving information avoidance by consumers when revelation is stochastic and the revealed information is potentially erroneous. Our formal considerations based on a cognitive dissonance model suggest that the size of the price difference between product options determines if information avoidance arises. This prediction is suppo...

We recently received comments to this paper, which seem to imply the reproach of “grandstanding”, which would be in violation of most norms of scientific integrity. We therefore examine the comments carefully below.

- Ecosystems of natural mountain lakes are threatened by global change - Ecological disturbance can alter provision of Ecosystem Services (ES) - ES are indicators for mountain regions’ social-ecological systems - Mountain lakes’ ES and societal perspectives are under-explored

We theoretically and experimentally investigate the effect of self-servinginformation avoidance on moral bias in democratic and individual decisionsin the context of climate change mitigation. Subjects choose between twoallocations that differ in payoffs and contributions to carbon offsets. We varythe observability of the offset contribution, as we...

We aim to explain the existence and severity of environmental policy diffusion, i.e., how a jurisdiction's regulation is closely followed by other, independent, jurisdictions. We outline a political economy model in which two lobby groups-representing industrial and environmental interests-seek to advocate or prevent domestic regulation. As product...

We investigate if decision makers avoid information to exploit moral wiggle room in green market settings. We therefore implement a laboratory experiment in which subjects purchase products associated with externalities. In six between-subjects treatments, we alter the availability of information on the externalities, the price of revealing informa...

Hypotheses The growing demand for outdoor recreation is expected to lead to • higher visitation rates of alpine lakes • higher pressure on ecosystems • increasing conflicts with other types of use.

A published version of this paper is available at: doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2021.102457 We investigate if people exploit moral wiggle room in green markets when revelation is stochastic and the revealed information is potentially erroneous. In our laboratory experiment, subjects purchase products associated with co-benefits represented as a contrib...

We investigate the efficiency of Coasean bargaining when transfers between agents are capped. We model a two-stage Coasean environment where, in the first stage, property rights are costly to attribute. After the attribution stage, agents voluntarily exchange over the level of harm. If property rights are attributed via an all-pay auction, then the...

Coasean arguments against the Pigouvian perspective are well established. A central tenet in this criticism argues that a Pigouvian tax may be a source of inefficiency: if parties were to bargain in the presence of a Pigouvian tax, (allocative) inefficiencies would occur—the so-called Buchanan–Stubblebine–Turvey Theorem. By analyzing a Coasean envi...

The conventional economic argument favors the use of market-based instruments over ‘command-and-control’ regulation. This viewpoint, however, is often limited in the description and characteristics of the latter; namely, environmental standards are often portrayed as lacking structured abatement incentives. Yet contemporary forms of command-and-con...

In this paper, we examine budget approaches as a device for burden sharing in mitigating climate change. The purpose of this comment is twofold: First, we provide an overview over the general concept of budget approaches and investigate into the role of such approaches within the current climate negotiations. Second, as these approaches have an obv...

Within environmental finance, the guiding question of “who measures what for whom” can be examined from different angles. In this paper the authors argue that, provided environmental markets are well-designed, measuring environmental performance is very closely related to measuring financial success for the primary actors on the market. Hence, at t...

The inclusion of Programmes of Activities (PoAs) within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has been limited by the fact that third-party project validators, who determine the eligibility of a CDM Project Activity (CPA), are currently held liable for any certificates that are erroneously issued. As such, validators must replace any credits issued...

Regulating international externalities, like climate change, raises various enforcement problems. It is often argued that international price-based regulations (e.g. emission taxes) are more difficult to enforce than quantity-based regulations (e.g. tradable pollution permits). In this paper, we analyze the relative performance of price-based and q...

This working paper is to discuss policy instruments which would, in principle, lend themselves for a scale-up of employer-led incentive schemes. Given that such an implementation requires financial transfers, our focus is on project-based CO2-markets and direct subsidy schemes to end-consumers. Up to the present, only Switzerland has implemented a...

Project-based emissions trading schemes, like the Clean Development Mechanism, are particularly prone to problems of asymmetric information between project parties and the regulator. In this paper, we extend the general framework on incomplete enforcement of policy instruments to reflect the particularities of credit-based mechanisms. The main focu...

Opportunistic behaviour due to incomplete contract enforcement is a risk in many economic transactions such as forest carbon sequestration contracts. In this paper, an enforcement-proof incentive contract is developed in which a buyer demands a guaranteed delivery of a good or service given a productive upfront payment, moral hazard in precaution,...

We focus on the optimal timing of climate change mitigation policies, a decision which is complicated by multiple sources of irreversibility or inertia. The pertinence of Real Option Theory in understanding the optimal amount of necessary precautionary behavior is explored, as are the results from modeling exercises. Generally, it appears that irre...

Enacting market-based environmental regulation, such as emissions taxes and cap-and-trade programs, often create rents that are contested by agents. In this paper, we create a framework that compares social welfare from alter-native market-based environmental policy instruments under the presence of distributional conflict. We show that, contrary t...

Enforcement of international environmental quantity regulations (e.g. tradable pollution permits) is often expected to be stricter than that of price regulations (e.g. emission taxes). While both instruments provide opportunities for misrepresenting actual pollution, enforcement of international price-based instruments is additionally hampered by p...

Project-based Emissions Trading Schemes, like the Clean Development Mechanism, are particularly prone to problems of asymmetric information between the project parties and the regulator. Given the specificities of these schemes, the regulator’s optimal monitoring strategy significantly differs from the one to be applied for capand- trade schemes or...

As carbon sinks, forests play a critical role in helping to mitigate the growing threat from anthropogenic climate change. Forest carbon offsets transacted between GHG emitters in industrialised countries and sellers in developing countries have emerged as a useful climate policy tool. A model is developed that investigates the role of incentives i...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

According,to the ,Kyoto rules the temporary ,Certified Emission ,Rights stemming ,from ,CDM forestry projects have to be replaced by the buyer, if the underlying absorption is undone. This leads to inefficiently low precaution ,levels the seller’s part. This paper ,examines ,the possibility to remedy ,this regulatory,shortfall at the ,level of the...