Information disclosure under liability: an experiment on public bads

Julien Jacob (), Eve-Angeline Lambert, Mathieu Lefebvre and Sarah van Driessche ()
Additional contact information
Julien Jacob: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Sarah van Driessche: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We experimentally investigate the impact of information disclosure on managing common harms that are caused jointly by a group of liable agents. Subjects interact in a public bad setting and must choose ex ante how much to contribute in order to reduce the probability of causing a common damage. If a damage occurs, subjects bear a part of the loss according to the liability-sharing rule in force. We consider two existing rules: a per capita rule and a proportional rule. Our aim is to analyze the relative impact of information disclosure under each rule. We show that information disclosure increases contributions only under a per capita rule. This result challenges the classical results regarding the positive effects of information disclosure, since we show that this impact may depend upon the legal context. We also show that while a proportional rule leads to higher contributions than a per capita one, the positive effect of disclosure on a per capita rule makes it as efficient as a proportional rule without information disclosure.

Keywords: Information disclosure; Common harms; Environmental Regulation; Liability Sharing Rules; Public Bads; Multiple Tortfeasors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-exp and nep-gth
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-03922400
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Social Choice and Welfare, 2023, 61 (1), pp.155-197. ⟨10.1007/s00355-022-01444-0⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://amu.hal.science/hal-03922400/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Information disclosure under liability: an experiment on public bads (2023)
Working Paper: Information disclosure under liability: an experiment on public bads (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03922400

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-022-01444-0

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().