PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Schilizzi, Steven
AU  - Latacz-Lohmann, Uwe
TI  - Assessing the Performance of Conservation Auctions: An Experimental Study
AID  - 10.3368/le.83.4.497
DP  - 2007 Nov 01
TA  - Land Economics
PG  - 497--515
VI  - 83
IP  - 4
4099  - http://le.uwpress.org/content/83/4/497.short
4100  - http://le.uwpress.org/content/83/4/497.full
SO  - Land Econ2007 Nov 01; 83
AB  - This work uses controlled laboratory experiments to investigate the budgetary and the economic performance of competitive tenders for allocating conservation contracts to landholders. Experiments have been replicated in two different countries to check for robustness of results. We find that auctions outperform the more traditional fixed-price programs only in the one-shot setting. With repetition, the auctions quickly lose their edge. The budget-constrained auction performs similarly to the target-constrained in the one-shot setting but appears more robust to repetition. Our results suggest that previous estimates of conservation auction performance are too optimistic, and we propose a method for improving such estimates. (JEL Q24)