Research
Working Papers:
"Externalities and Common Pool Licenses: An Experimental Study of Managing Differeing Natural Resource Uses." R&R Agricultural and Resource Economics Review
Tom J. Frye
"Balancing the Books: How Competence Shapes Objectivity and Independence of Thought."
Tom J. Frye and Eddie Thomas
"Neighborhood Sorting Through Parcel Acquisitions with Negative Externalities"
Tom J. Frye, R. Mark Isaac, Carl Kitchens
Work in Progress:
(Tentative Title) Shared Vulnerability in Audits and the Provision of Economic Goods: An Experimetnal Study.
Tom J. Frye and Eddie Thomas
A Theory of Budget Competition and Incentive Incompatibility between State Agencies.
Tom J. Frye
Selected Abstracts
Externalities and Common Pool Licenses: An Experimental Study of Managing Differeing Natural Resource Uses
Abstract:
In this paper, I discuss dual collective action problems in which a resource pool has simultaneous common pool and public good aspects in its usage, such as hunting (consumption) and conservation of wildlife. I then implement laboratory experiments to evaluate how spillovers between the two related uses of nature affect the consumption and conservation habits of stakeholders. The Nash predictions suggest that even the most selfish of profit-maximizing agents have an incentive to provide equally towards resource consumption and conservation when resource spillovers are present. Results from laboratory experiments are consistent with this hypothesis. As a policy intervention, I introduced and later revoked a common pool licensing policy based on U.S. hunting and fishing licensing. Under the same theoretical framework, removing a common pool licensing policy would increase welfare for all resource stakeholders. Contrary to this, experimental evidence indicates no overall change in welfare.
Threshold Common Pool Resources and Ambiguous Natural Dilemmas.
Abstract:
This study aims to test the existence of a theoretical phenomenon in which the absence of crucial distributional information available for a threshold common pool resource (CPR) may negatively affect its own sustainable use. I explore two cases of this environment, one in which the resource’s destructive tipping point has a known distribution (risk) and one in which an objective probability cannot be calculated (ambiguity). The relevant theory predicts that higher uncertainty, both known and unknown, will increase consumption of threshold CPRs. Because ambiguity also increases resource consumption in theory, this is of interest to observe experimentally to see if imprecise information does indeed lead to further resource deterioration beyond the boundaries of known risk. Similar to past literature, this study produces experimental evidence that increases in threshold risk have a strong positive marginal effect on common pool requests. Most importantly, I find new evidence in the lab that supports the notion that increasing the degree of environmental ambiguity by introducing imprecise information further increases consumption in the commons when second order stochastic dominance of distributions is controlled for in analysis.