Projects in detail

Publications and Working papers

Dupoux and Martinet (2022). "Could the environment be a normal good for you and an inferior good for me? A theory of context-dependent substitutability and needs.". Resource and Energy Economics, Vol 69 101316. 

Theoretical models often assume the environment to be a normal good, irrespective of one's income. However, a priori, nothing prohibits an environmental good from being normal for some individuals and inferior for others. We develop a conceptual framework in which private consumption and an environmental public good act as substitutes or complements for satisfying different needs. Subsequently, the environment can switch between normal and inferior depending on one’s income and environment and corresponding prevalent needs. If the environment is inferior for some range of income, then the willingness to pay for environmental preservation becomes non-monotonic with respect to income. We discuss the relevance of our framework in the context of (income-adjusted) unit benefit transfers, dual-rate discounting and the Environmental Kuznets curve.

Dupoux (2019). "The land use change time-accounting failure". Ecological Economics, Vol 164. 

This paper builds on the disconnection between scientific evidence and policy assumptions about the temporal profile of land use change (LUC) emissions. Whereas natural scientists find evidence of a decreasing time profile of LUC emissions, European energy policy relies on a steady time profile. We investigate the consequences of using such a uniform (constant) time profile when assessing biofuel projects with cost-benefit analysis, a widespread economic tool for public project assessment. We show that the use of the uniform time profile distorts LUC emissions costs downwards (upwards) when carbon prices grow slower (faster) than the discount rate. We illustrate our results with the conversion of grassland to wheat cultivation for bioethanol production in France. Under current assumptions in public project assessment, we find a 70% overestimation of costs related to direct LUC emissions. We propose two tools to aid in decision-making and address the decision error. Finally, we provide contextual policy recommendations. 

Keywords: environment, public goods, substitutability, needs, context, willingness to pay, inferior goods


Beyond perfect substitutability in public good games: heterogeneous structures of preferences

Working Paper downloadable HERE The literature on public good games is very focused on the additive separability of the values of the private and the public goods. Yet, the additive structure underlies a perfect substitutability relationship between private and public goods, which is a strong assumption. This paper studies the effect of payoff/preference structures on contributions to the public good within a voluntary contributions experiment in both homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. Within the structure of substitutability, I find that subjects free-ride more often when they interact with subjects of the other type (complementarity) for whom it is optimal to contribute. Introducing such a heterogeneity may provide a method for the identification of free-riders. Nonetheless, an advantageous inequality aversion emerges as well. This means that under perfect substitutability, subjects tend to dislike earning too much compared to their group member whose payoffs underlie complementarity, a more constraining structure. Awarded the Young Economist Best Paper Prize at the FAERE Annual Conference (2017)Keywords: structure of payoffs, public good game, substitutability, complementarity, heterogeneity, free-riding, inequality, panel data

Ongoing projects



An analysis of the drivers of substitution of dangerous flame-retardants in electronics

With Jessica Coria and Daniel SlungeReducing the risks that chemical substances may cause for people and the environment can be achieved by the substitution of hazardous chemicals by less hazardous alternatives. While the willingness to switch to safer chemicals has been studied among consumers of products, there is a lack of research on what drives the substitution of chemical substances by manufacturers and intermediate firms. In this study, we surveyed companies that sell, distribute and/or import electronic products in Sweden to investigate firms’ preferences and behaviour towards the use of safer alternatives to flame-retardants in electronic appliances placed on the Swedish market. By means of a choice experiment, we are able to identify the relative importance of four levers for chemical substitution, namely health and environmental effects of flame-retardants, chemical regulations in Europe, the final price of the product and a label that discloses tax reductions connected to the use of safer flame-retardants. The data collected allow us to determine firms’ willingness to pay to switch to safer alternatives, and compare this willingness to pay to the compliance cost of existing regulations such as the Swedish tax on electronics and the European Chemical Regulation REACH. Our results also allows us to inform policy makers how to better foster chemical substitution towards safer chemicals and even test the effect of complementary market-based/information disclosure policy interventions that increase the effect of current regulations.

Keywords: flame retardants, chemical substitution, companies, health, environment, REACH, Swedish tax on chemicals in electronics, choice experiment, survey

Distribution of social preferences in changing environments

With Laurent FaucheuxA growing literature in economics reveals there is substantial heterogeneity in social preferences in a population. Social preferences are mainly estimated in fixed environments, i.e. involving fixed attributes of the game. Because all these attributes are likely to affect behaviour, several authors questioned the robustness of social preferences across different environments, calling for the inclusion of an environmental variable in behavioural models to understand its influence on behaviour. In this paper, we investigate whether the distribution of social preferences is robust to changing environments. We first develop a simple theoretical model that accounts for preference shifts due to the environment. To test our model, we use series of one-shot public good games to elicit the distribution of social preferences and test whether this distribution varies between two different environments. In the first environment (control treatment), subjects face equal payoff opportunities while in the second environment (treatment), subjects face unequal payoff opportunities. More precisely, we have two types of subjects, namely the Low type with low marginal returns from the public good and the High type with higher marginal returns. Either subjects play with their peers i.e. the same type of subject (control treatment) or with the other type of subject (treatment). To infer social preferences, we use a structural model that allows us to capture preference heterogeneity. We endogenously identify the different social preference profiles that exist in the data. Then, we apply the random utility model for ordered alternatives (Small, 1987) that i) avoids overfitting, ii) yields robustness of identified motives across treatments and iii) fits the choice patterns both descriptively and predictively.Keywords: public good game, social preferences, heterogeneity, changing environment, lab experiment, structural modelling, finite mixture models

How does social information improve public support for corrective taxes?

With Benjamin OuvrardCorrective taxes aim at encouraging healthier, safer and less polluting behaviours and have been considered on various markets. The carbon tax has recently received a specific attention due to its low acceptability among citizens, the “Yellows vests” movement in France being an example. Even if other types of instruments that could improve policy support by the public exist, like subsidies, taxes are largely used by governments for their efficiency and their ability to raise revenues. Given the efficiency of such fiscal instruments, and instead of trying to find other instruments more accepted by the general public, one solution is to try to improve the public support for such instruments. Our first objective in this paper is therefore to assess whether it is possible to foster public support for externality-correcting taxes. While several solutions have been tested in the literature such as labeling the tax differently, varying the recycling of tax revenues or providing budgetary information, we focus here on the effect of social information on voting behaviour in favour of the tax. Indeed, the potential of social information to influence behaviour proved out to be significant. Besides, our second objective is to understand the mechanisms underlying the effect of social information on public support. We focus on the role of beliefs, which has attracted little attention in the literature. Our design allows us to i) study the effect of social information on votes for a Pigouvian tax, and ii) investigate whether normative and/or positive expectations could be a channel through which social information affects public support. 
Keywords: beliefs, corrective taxes, externality game, social information, voting behaviour, lab experiment

Glyphosate in social media: a spatio-temporal analysis of controversies among European stakeholders

With Abdulhakim M. Abdi, Niklas Boke Olén, Michael Bossetta, Nils Droste, Maj Rundlöf and Vasiliki  SimakiThere is no clear scientific consensus about the effects of the herbicide glyphosate on human health and the environment. Yet, the societal debates about its regulation and economic consequences are heated. Social media (and more specifically Twitter) content constitutes a useful source of information and influence for policy makers, stakeholders and other actors when it comes to important socio-ecological issues such as the potentially harmful use of glyphosate in farming and gardening. Understanding the dynamics and (emotional) content of the discourse can raise awareness and help to take relevant actions. To map the discursive terrain over time, we will employ  state  of  the  art  social  media  analysis  algorithms  that  allow  us  to  derive  sentiment (like happiness and sadness), stances (like certainty and uncertainty), and latent topics from around 2.5 million tweets on glyphosate from 2006-2019 in all European languages. As such, the project will build social media analysis competences  within  an  interdisciplinary  team  spanning  Gothenburg  and  Lund  and  provide  cross-cutting collaborations  between  research  groups  within  BECC.  Thereby, the project will  contribute knowledge on how to tackle the socio-ecological grand challenges and improve our understanding of how science, policy, and social media discourse interaction a highly contested topic.Keywords: tweet, stances, sentiments, political events, glyphosate, health, environment, stakeholders, Europe, text analysis, sentiment analysis, dynamic topic model, BERT model, spatial analysis, causal inference

Drivers of the willingness to use car-sharing: An application to the Gothenburg area

With Magnus HennlockWe run a choice experiment to evaluate how car-sharing could be integrated in people's mobility habits in the area of Gothenburg. We consider 4 attributes, namely, the availability of the transport mode, the access time to the transport mode, the fuel type and the monthly cost of the mobility pattern. Our design is respondent-specific (i.e. the reference alternative is different across respondents) to make the experiment as close-to-reality as possible. Experiment interrupted because of Covid restrictionsKeywords: car-sharing, mobility habits, choice experiment

projects in their early phase


Inequalities of "power to act" and justice of the ecological transition

With Emmanuel Combet, Antonin Pottier and Jessica Nihlén FahlquistWe plan to develop the concept of 'power to act' in order to contribute to an ecological transition that takes into account inter-individual differences and the 'room for manoeuvre' that individuals have. This project was motivated by the yellow vests movement that called for a better understanding of the inequalities triggered by a carbon tax. The objective of this project is to specify the notion of “power to act” theoretically, construct its measurement, define a method to analyse the gap between the theoretical notion and the perception of the actors and examine how to mobilise it in the design of public policies. We expect that the theoretical and methodological bases obtained will allow the design of a larger project (survey and experimental analysis in several countries).Keywords: carbon tax, yellow vests, power to act, justice, survey