Conference Agenda

This paper investigates the acceptability of public policies seeking to mitigate negative externalities through a majority vote. We use an unframed laboratory experiment where participants face a negative externalities game, and we introduce public policies through taxation policies and bans with available alternatives. The participants are asked to vote for or against the policy implementation before and after experiencing the game and a policy trial. We explore the influences of policy trial experiences, cultural worldviews, and the support of bans and taxes on policy decisions. The results indicate that support for regulatory standards is higher than for taxes. We also find that experience from a policy trial affects regulatory standards' acceptability exclusively. Moreover, the study demonstrates that hierarchical cultural worldviews decrease support only for taxation policies.

Public consultations are widely used in public decision-making. They are intended to allow stakeholders (firms, NGOs, the civil society) to present their viewpoints and to provide information useful for the decision, even though their interests are biased. We develop a framework to analyze regulatory decision-making informed by biased stakeholders. Based on this framework, we derive a series of hypotheses concerning expected regulatory outcomes and illustrate our results in the case of chemical regulation in the European Union. We highlight that errors in decision-making are reduced when regulators (i) receive advice from several stakeholders with opposite biases, and (ii) follow the advice of stakeholders whose recommendation runs against their expected bias. We find evidence that chemical regulation in the EU follows (i), while (ii) only holds for the advice provided by firms but not for organizations.

Voter backlash can pose an important political economy barrier to the public and political acceptability of phasing out fossil fuels. We investigate the case of Colombia, a country heavily dependent on coal exports, which recently announced a complete phasing out of fossil fuels. Using a novel and unique data set, we analyze how municipality-level changes in extracted coal and associated mining employment interact with voting outcomes, looking at presidential elections from 2014-2022. Applying a staggered difference-in-difference design with continuous treatment, we find that pro-mining and reformist parties are able to capitalize on changes in local coal labor markets. At the same time, we find less political support for parties that promote phasing out mining activities, pointing towards increasing political polarization.

This article analyzes the advocacy strategies of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). I develop a model in which ENGOs can engage in costly advocacy activities to foster pro-environmental policy changes on different dimensions. The model gives insights on their optimal advocacy strategies, and their reaction functions to lobbying from other actors. I find support for strategic complementarity of advocacy efforts using data on meetings held between ENGOs and European Commission members. ENGOs tend to crowd in on the same topics at the same time. This result is driven by a political agenda effect, suggesting time-limited attention among policymakers.