Environmental Policy Group at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Abstract
In April 2000, the Georgia legislature passed a law requiring that the state use an unspecified "auction-like process" to pay some farmers to suspend irrigation in declared drought years. In response, we conducted a series of laboratory and field experiments to test a variety of auction procedures. This paper reports the results of these experiments, and how they were used by the policy makers who determined the auction procedures. Experimental results are compared with farmers' bidding behavior in the state-run irrigation auction conducted in March 2001. Working Paper # 2002-00
