IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/feb/natura/00513.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

"Beggar thy Neighbor:" Testing for Free Riding in State-Level Endangered Species Expenditures

Author

Listed:
  • Erwin Bulte
  • John List
  • Jason Shogren

Abstract

An important public policy question that remains unresolved is whether devolution will enhance sensible policy making by exploiting informational asymmetries or, instead, trigger a "beggar thy neighbor" response and stimulate free riding amongst localities. We analyze this question within the framework of U.S. environmental policy making by scrutinizing a unique panel data set on state-level endangered species expenditure patterns. Our empirical estimates are consistent with the notion that states free ride, which may lead to an expenditure equilibrium that is not Pareto efficient.

Suggested Citation

  • Erwin Bulte & John List & Jason Shogren, 2002. ""Beggar thy Neighbor:" Testing for Free Riding in State-Level Endangered Species Expenditures," Natural Field Experiments 00513, The Field Experiments Website.
    • Handle: RePEc:feb:natura:00513
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00513.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hewitt, Julie A & Brown, Daniel K, 2000. "Agency Costs in Environmental Not-for-Profits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(1-2), pages 163-183, April.
    2. Julie Hewitt & Daniel Brown, 2000. "Agency Costs in Environmental Not-For-Profits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 163-183, April.
    3. Martin L. Weitzman, 1998. "The Noah's Ark Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(6), pages 1279-1298, November.
    4. Martin L. Weitzman, 1992. "On Diversity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 363-405.
    5. John A. List, 2001. "Do Explicit Warnings Eliminate the Hypothetical Bias in Elicitation Procedures? Evidence from Field Auctions for Sportscards," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1498-1507, December.
    6. Martin L. Weitzman, 1993. "What to Preserve? An Application of Diversity Theory to Crane Conservation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(1), pages 157-183.
    7. Andrew Metrick & Martin L. Weitzman, 1996. "Patterns of Behavior in Endangered Species Preservation," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 72(1), pages 1-16.
    8. Andrew Metrick & Martin L. Weitzman, 1998. "Conflicts and Choices in Biodiversity Preservation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 21-34, Summer.
    9. Boadway, Robin & Horiba, Isao & Jha, Raghbendra, 1999. "The Provision of Public Services by Government Funded Decentralized Agencies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 100(3-4), pages 157-184, September.
    10. Merrifield, John, 2000. "State Government Expenditure Determinants and Tax Revenue Determinants Revisited," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 102(1-2), pages 25-50, January.
    11. Gardner M. Brown & Jason F. Shogren, 1998. "Economics of the Endangered Species Act," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 3-20, Summer.
    12. Wallace E. Oates, 1991. "Studies In Fiscal Federalism," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 342.
    13. Weitzman, M.L., 1992. "Diversity Functions," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1610, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wallace E. Oates & Wallace E. Oates, 2004. "A Reconsideration of Environmental Federalism," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 7, pages 125-156, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Mumbunan, Sonny & Ring, Irene & Lenk, Thomas, 2012. "Ecological fiscal transfers at the provincial level in Indonesia," UFZ Discussion Papers 06/2012, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Division of Social Sciences (ÖKUS).
    3. John A. List, 2014. "Using Field Experiments to Change the Template of How We Teach Economics," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(2), pages 81-89, June.
    4. Ying She & Yaobin Liu & Yangu Deng & Lei Jiang, 2020. "Can China’s Government-Oriented Environmental Regulation Reduce Water Pollution? Evidence from Water Pollution Intensive Firms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-19, September.
    5. Hallsworth, Michael & List, John A. & Metcalfe, Robert D. & Vlaev, Ivo, 2017. "The behavioralist as tax collector: Using natural field experiments to enhance tax compliance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 14-31.
    6. Edward López & R. Jewell, 2007. "Strategic institutional choice: Voters, states, and congressional term limits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 137-157, July.
    7. Nils Droste & Claudia Becker & Irene Ring & Rui Santos, 2018. "Decentralization Effects in Ecological Fiscal Transfers: A Bayesian Structural Time Series Analysis for Portugal," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 71(4), pages 1027-1051, December.
    8. Kumar, Surender & Managi, Shunsuke, 2009. "Compensation for environmental services and intergovernmental fiscal transfers: The case of India," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(12), pages 3052-3059, October.
    9. Jeffrey Flory & Uri Gneezy & Kenneth Leonard & John List, 2012. "Sex, competitiveness, and investment in offspring: On the origin of preferences," Artefactual Field Experiments 00072, The Field Experiments Website.
    10. Bonnie Harllee & Myungsup Kim & Michael Nieswiadomy, 2009. "Political influence on historical ESA listings by state: a count data analysis," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(1), pages 21-42, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Perry, Neil, 2010. "The ecological importance of species and the Noah's Ark problem," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 478-485, January.
    2. Baumgartner, Stefan & Becker, Christian & Faber, Malte & Manstetten, Reiner, 2006. "Relative and absolute scarcity of nature. Assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(4), pages 487-498, October.
    3. William A. Brock & Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2003. "Valuing Biodiversity from an Economic Perspective: A Unified Economic, Ecological, and Genetic Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1597-1614, December.
    4. Juutinen, Artti, 2008. "Old-growth boreal forests: Worth protecting for biodiversity?," Journal of Forest Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 242-267, November.
    5. Samuel, Aurelia F. & Drucker, Adam G. & Andersen, Sven B. & Simianer, Henner & van Zonneveld, Maarten, 2013. "Development of a cost-effective diversity-maximising decision-support tool for in situ crop genetic resources conservation: The case of cacao," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 155-164.
    6. Zander, Kerstin K. & Drucker, Adam G. & Holm-Müller, Karin & Simianer, Henner, 2009. "Choosing the "cargo" for Noah's Ark - Applying Weitzman's approach to Borana cattle in East Africa," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 2051-2057, May.
    7. Martinet, Vincent & Blanchard, Fabian, 2009. "Fishery externalities and biodiversity: Trade-offs between the viability of shrimp trawling and the conservation of Frigatebirds in French Guiana," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(12), pages 2960-2968, October.
    8. Fadlaoui, Aziz & Roosen, Jutta & Baret, Philippe V., 2005. "Of Experts, Politicians and Beasts: Setting Priorities in Farm Animal Conservation Choices," 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark 24546, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Andrew Metrick & Martin L. Weitzman, 1998. "Conflicts and Choices in Biodiversity Preservation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 21-34, Summer.
    10. Catherine M. Chambers & Paul E. Chambers & John R. Crooker & John C. Whitehead, 2008. "Stochastic Dominance, Entropy and Biodiversity Management," Working Papers 08-08, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    11. Maarten Punt & Hans-Peter Weikard & Ekko Ierland & Jan Stel, 2012. "Large Scale Marine Protected Areas for Biodiversity Conservation Along a Linear Gradient: Cooperation, Strategic Behavior or Conservation Autarky?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 53(2), pages 203-228, October.
    12. Tilman, David & Polasky, Stephen & Lehman, Clarence, 2005. "Diversity, productivity and temporal stability in the economies of humans and nature," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 405-426, May.
    13. Martin L. Weitzman, 1998. "The Noah's Ark Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(6), pages 1279-1298, November.
    14. Bervoets, Sebastian & Gravel, Nicolas, 2007. "Appraising diversity with an ordinal notion of similarity: An axiomatic approach," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 259-273, May.
    15. Simianer, H. & Marti, S. B. & Gibson, J. & Hanotte, O. & Rege, J. E. O., 2003. "An approach to the optimal allocation of conservation funds to minimize loss of genetic diversity between livestock breeds," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 377-392, July.
    16. Dyar, Julie A. & Wagner, Jeffrey, 2003. "Uncertainty and species recovery program design," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(2, Supple), pages 505-522, March.
    17. Gerber, Nicolas, 2011. "Biodiversity measures based on species-level dissimilarities: A methodology for assessment," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2275-2281.
    18. Lynn Mainwaring, 2001. "Biodiversity, Biocomplexity, and the Economics of Genetic Dissimilarity," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 77(1), pages 79-83.
    19. Béné, C. & Doyen, L., 2008. "Contribution values of biodiversity to ecosystem performances: A viability perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1-2), pages 14-23, December.
    20. Narloch, Ulf & Drucker, Adam G. & Pascual, Unai, 2011. "Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services for sustained on-farm utilization of plant and animal genetic resources," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 1837-1845, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:feb:natura:00513. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Franks (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.fieldexperiments.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.