Conference Agenda

Agricultural specialization maximizes land use efficiency but it also amplifies pest pressure, thereby requiring heavy pesticide use. This paper evaluates the economic benefits of using an ecological approach that recommends reducing specialization to leverage natural pest control. We develop a model in which the resilience of a farmer’s field is endogenous to the crop and pesticide choices of her neighbors, with both same-crop and inter-crop externalities. Using disaggregated data on 40 crops and novel instrumental variables, we then estimate the extent to which cross-field externalities impact crop productivity. Results show that maintaining a high diversity of crop species in a county significantly boosts yields of major crops like maize, rice, and wheat. Eventually, we illustrate the benefits of diversification on production and revenues by simulating alternative farmland distributions.

Increasing attention is being paid to the design of economic incentives for conservation on private land which encourage spatial coordination. However, the design of such incentives relies on accurate, quantitative parameters to assess and reward the extra ecological benefits arising from contiguous conservation. Empirically, such ‘edge benefits’ have been shown to vary substantially across species and contexts, implying that the policy designer may make use of the wrong data to incentivise coordination. Our paper undertakes a framed field experiment to investigate the implications of using the wrong edge benefit parameters in the specific contexts of reverse auctions. We consider two auction mechanisms, a spatially coordinated (SC) mechanism which directly accounts for edge benefits in the contract allocation objective, and an agglomeration bonus (AB) mechanism which incentivises contiguous conservation using bonus payments based on edge benefit parameters. We conducted experimental auctions with a total of 240 Chinese farmers who participated in 40 auction groups. Our results suggest that SC auctions tend to have weaker performance if the parameters adopted are ‘sufficiently wrong’ and mis-target a sub-optimal set of farms than those that should have been prioritised according to the true edge benefits. Parameters that under-estimate the true edge benefits are likely to induce better auction performance than those that over-estimate. The AB mechanism designed in this study appears to be less sensitive to incorrect parameters, but when the correct ecological parameters are used, this AB mechanism is found to underperform the SC mechanism. These findings provide considerable insights for policy designers of conservation auctions subject to high heterogeneity and uncertainty in the ecological benefits of contiguous conservation.

France is struggling to expand the area under organic farming (OF). Public investment in the conversion and maintenance of this agricultural system remains limited, despite European objectives aiming for 25% of agricultural land dedicated to OF and France's national target of 18% by 2027. In this study, we conducted a survey of French consumers to explore crowdfunding as a potential financing solution to assist farmers. We are among the first studies to explicitly examine citizens' preferences for participatory support mechanisms for OF, specifically through monetary contributions (crowdfunding), including donations (crowdgifting) and loans (crowdlending), as well as time contributions (crowdsourcing). Crowdfunding participation is influenced by a variety of socio-economic, experiential, and behavioral factors. We observe that willingness to contribute—whether financially or through labor—is high, and that certain project characteristics, such as location or the presence of a counterparty, are particularly valued. Individuals who consume organic products are more likely to engage in crowdfunding. Additionally, those following specific dietary regimes (e.g., vegetarianism, veganism) show a higher propensity to support crowdfunding projects that do not involve livestock production. Willingness to pay a price premium for organic food is also a strong determinant of crowdfunding participation. Furthermore, individuals who perceive their involvement in crowdfunding as a factor influencing their future organic food consumption are more likely to participate in donation- and loan-based crowdfunding. Understanding these dynamics is essential for designing targeted campaigns that effectively engage potential contributors.

There is growing evidence that households do not even undertake profitable energy efficiency retrofits, partly because they are inattentive to and imperfectly informed about their economic value. We conduct an framed field experiment to quantify the effectiveness and the welfare effects of a widespread policy tool to overcome this issue: energy efficiency audits. Participants in the treatment group of our incentivized experiment obtain personalized information on the cost savings of retrofitting the heating system, whereas participants in a control group do not obtain such information. We find that the provision of information does not increase the average willingness-to-pay for a retrofit. However, it improves the alignment between households' cost savings and their decision to retrofit, which translate into welfare gains of about 30 EUR per household and year.

Minerals are essential to fuel the green transition, can foster local employment and facilitate economic development. However, their extraction is linked to several negative social and environmental externalities. These are particularly poorly understood in a development context, undermining efforts to address and internalize them. In this paper, we exploit the discontinuous locations of mines along rivers and their basins to identify causal effects on agricultural yields in Africa. We find considerable impacts on vegetation and yields downstream, which are mediated by water pollution and only dissipate slowly with distance. Our findings suggest that pollution from mines may play a role in the limited adoption of intensive agriculture. They underscore an urgent need for domestic regulations and international governance to limit negative externalities from mining in vulnerable regions.