Pricing externalities and moral behaviour

Axel Ockenfels, Peter Werner and Ottmar Edenhofer

Nature Sustainability, 2020, vol. 3, issue 10, 872-877

Abstract: Abstract To measure how moral behaviour interacts with pricing regimes, we conduct highly controlled experiments in which trading creates pollution. We compare indirect pricing (here, a cap and trade mechanism) and direct pricing (a tax) in an otherwise equivalent setting in which ‘producers’ are incentivized to emit CO2. ‘Judges’ decide on central trading parameters that may restrict socially harmful activities. Profit maximization predicts the same producer behaviour in either setting in the absence of regulation, yet we find a substantial share of producers refraining from emitting CO2 at all. Although judges restrict behaviour in similar ways across mechanisms, direct pricing more effectively accommodates moral behaviour than the quantity policy.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0554-1

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