Alston, Lee J.
[Verfasser:in]
;
Andersson, Krister
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft];
Smith, Steven M.
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft]National Bureau of Economic Research
Erschienen:
Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2013
Erschienen in:NBER working paper series ; no. w18740
Umfang:
1 Online-Ressource
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.3386/w18740
Identifikator:
Reproduktionsnotiz:
Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Mode of access: World Wide Web
System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files
Beschreibung:
The use of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) is not a new type of contract but they have become more in vogue because of the potential for sequestering carbon by paying to prevent deforestation and degradation of forest lands. We provide a framework utilizing transaction costs to hypothesize which services are more likely to be provided effectively. We then interpret the literature on PES programs to see the extent to which transaction costs vary as predicted across the type of service and assess the performance of PES programs. As predicted we find that transaction costs are the least for club goods like water and greatest for pure public goods like carbon reduction. Actual performance is difficult to measure and varies across the examples. More work and experimentation is needed to gain a better outlook on what elements support effective delivery of environmental services