Eliciting Risk Preferences: A Field Experiment on a Sample of French Farmers

We designed a field experiment involving real payments to elicit farmers’ risk preferences. Farmers are a very interesting sample to study since risk has always played an important role in agricultural producers’ decisions. Besides, European farmers may face more risky situations in the future. In this context, it is very important for any economic analysis focusing on agriculture to correctly assess farmers’ behaviour in the face of different sources of risk. We test for two descriptions of farmers’ behaviour: expected utility and cumulative prospect theory. We use two elicitation methods based on the procedures of Holt and Laury (2002) and Tanaka et al. (2010) on a sample of 30 French farmers. The experiment consists in asking subjects to make series of choices between two lotteries with varying probabilities and outcomes. We estimate parameters describing farmers’ risk preferences derived from structural models. We find farmers are slightly risk averse in the expected utility framework. In the cumulative prospect theory frame, we find farmers display either loss aversion or probability weighting, tending to overweight small probabilities and to underweight high probabilities. In our study, expected utility is not a good description of farmers’ behaviour towards risk.Risk Attitudes, Field Experiment, Farming, Risk and Uncertainty, C93, D81, Q10,

Buy local, pollute less: What drives households to join a community supported farm?

This paper examines which factors determine the participation of households in long term contracting with local farmers. Are households motivated by reducing the environmental impacts of their food consumption? A discrete-choice model of community supported agriculture (CSA) participation is applied to a sample of 264 French households. The findings suggest that difficult-to-measure attributes, notably environmental considerations play a major role in explaining CSA participation.community supported agriculture; food supply; transaction cost economics

Processing and electrical characterization of a unidirectional CFRP composite filled with double walled carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes represent new emergent multifunctional materials that have potential applications for structural and electrically conductive composites. In the current paper we present a suitable technique for the integration of Double Walled Carbon Nanotubes (DWCNTs) in a unidirectional Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) with high volume content of carbon fiber. We showed that the electrical conductivity of the laminates versus temperature follows a non-linear variation which can be well described by the Fluctuation-Induced Tunneling Conduction (FITC) model. The parameters of this model for CFRP/ DWCNTs and CFRP without DWCNTs were determined using best fit curves of the experimental data. This study has shown that DWCNTs have strong influence in the conductivity through laminate thickness. However, there are no significant effects on the electrical conductivity measured in the other two principle directions of the composite laminate. Furthermore, it was found that electron conduction mechanism of carbon fibers is dominated by the FITC

Dealing with the aversion to the sucker’s payoff in public goods game

A usual explanation to low levels of contribution to public goods is the fear of getting the sucker’s payoff (cooperation by the participant and defection by the other players). In order to disentangle the effect of this fear from other motives, we design a public good game where people have an insurance against getting the sucker’s payoff. We show that contributions to the public good under this ‘protective’ design are significantly higher and interact with expectations on other individuals' contribution to the public good. Some policy implications and extensions are suggested.

Dealing with aversion to the sucker's payoff in public goods games

A usual explanation to low levels of contribution to public goods is the fear of getting the sucker's payoff (cooperation by the participant and defection by the other players). In order to disentangle the effect of this fear from other motives, we design a public good game where people have an insurance against getting the sucker's payoff. We show that contributions to the public good under this ‘protective' design are significantly higher and interact with expectations on other individuals' contribution to the public good. Some policy implications and extensions are suggested.Experiments, Public good, Sucker's payoff, Assurance

Does aversion to the sucker's payoff matter in public goods games?

A usual explanation to low levels of contribution to public goods is the fear of getting the sucker’s payoff (cooperation by the participant and defection by the other players). In order to disentangle the effect of this fear from other motives, we design a public good game where people have an assurance against getting the sucker’s payoff. We show that contributions to the public good under this ‘protective’ design are significantly higher and interact with expectations on other individuals' contribution to the public good. Some policy implications and extensions are suggested.Experiments, Public good, Sucker’s payoff, Assurance

Can Positional Concerns Enhance the Private provision of Public Goods?

The social welfare effect of positional concerns over public goods is composed of two parts, a positional outcome and an outcome in terms of public goods provision. When agents have homogenous positional preferences over the public good, they overinvest in the positional public good, resulting in a zero-sum positional race with a higher provision of the public good. When agents differ in their positional preferences, the overall impact on social welfare is positive when endowments are homogenous and uncertain when endowments are heterogeneous. Given that the social loss from position-seeking is lower than the social gain from rank seeking, there is an increase of social welfare. If agents have different initial endowments, positional preferences might still be welfare enhancing as long as the positional loss does not exceed the gain in terms of public good provision.

How laboratory experiments could help disentangle the influences of production risk and risk preferences on input decisions

The purpose of this article is to further our understanding of input choices (such as pesticides or fertilisers) when producers face production risk that depends on a random shock and on the quantity of input used. Using laboratory experiments, we study the role of risk preferences and public policies (here, a lump-sum subsidy and insurance) on producers’ input decisions in two situations: i) a risk-decreasing input; and ii) a risk-increasing input. Our findings raise questions on the sensitivity of optimal input choices to risk preferences and the relevance of the expected utility model to describe farmers’ decisions