"Environmental Policy Formation: Political Economy and Behavioral Economics": A presentation by Amy Ando
Amy Ando is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her recent work includes "Welfare Effects and Unintended Consequences of Ethanol Subsidies? (with Madhu Khanna and Farzad Taheripour, 2008), "The Roles of Ownership, Ecology, and Economics in Public Wetland-Conservation Decisions" (with Michael Getzner, 2006), and "Recycling in multi-family dwellings: Does convenience matter?" (with Anne Gosselin, 2005). Her research focuses primarily on problems of species and land conservation, including the optimal reserve-site selection problem and understanding the relationship between private and public conservation activity.
Society often relies on government policy to correct environmental problems that stem from human behavior. However, the policy-formation process may fail when environmental change is slow or when human behavior in one location affects environmental quality in other places. Ando draws on two existing bodies of work in economics - political economy and behavioral economics - and presents some new findings to explore when the policy-formation process is most vulnerable to failure and what we can do about it.