The Environmental and Natural Resource Economics Workshop is supported by the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en analyse des organisations (CIRANO), the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative (CIREQ), the Réseau de recherche en économie circulaire du Québec (RRECQ) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ).
This workshop is intended for researchers and doctoral students in economics who are interested in resource and environmental economics.
The workshop will be led by a team of researchers composed of Geir B. Asheim (Oslo University), Hassan Benchekroun (McGill University), Sophie Bernard (Polytechnique Montréal), Etienne Billette de Villemeur (Université de Lille, UQAM), Robert Cairns (McGill University), Justin Leroux (HEC Montréal), and Charles Séguin (UQAM).
* Information on previous workshops can be found here.
Workshop Venue
This event will take place online and in English. You can access it via this link.
Speakers
Arnaud Dragicevic (Economics, Chulalongkorn University)
The Tragedy of the Commons as a Complex System Emergent Property
Abstract: This study models the Tragedy of the Commons as an emergent property of a complex adaptive system using a dynamic agent-based framework that integrates ecological and economic dynamics. By incorporating non-linear interactions, feedback loops, interconnectedness, adaptive behaviors, and stochastic processes, the model simulates how individual agents exploit a shared renewable resource. The effectiveness of various policy interventions – taxes, quotas, market exclusion, and cap-and-trade – is assessed. Findings reveal that taxes, quotas, and cap-and-trade systems effectively mitigate the Tragedy of the Commons by altering agents’ incentives and stabilizing resource stocks, though each exhibits different impacts on economic activity and resource sustainability. In contrast, market exclusion mechanisms prove ineffective, as agents intensify exploitation prior to exclusion, accelerating depletion. The research deepens the understanding of resource management in complex systems and contributes to complexity economics by moving beyond traditional assumptions of equilibrium and optimality.
Biography: Prof. Dr. Arnaud Dragicevic is an international faculty member at the Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and an associate researcher at CIRANO. He specializes in bioeconomics and socio-ecological systems.
Felix Muñoz-Garcia (Economics, Washington State University)
Environmental Policy: An Unintended Booster of Competition Policy? (with Ana Espinola-Arrendondo)
Abstract: We investigate how environmental regulation affects the effectiveness of competition policy (audits, leniency, and whistleblower programs) at deterring collusion in polluting industries. When competition policy is absent, the presence of environmental regulation does not affect the sustainability of collusion. When competition policy is present, however, we show that environmental policy amplifies the effectiveness of audits, leniency, and whistleblower programs at deterring collusive practices. Our results suggest that leniency and whistleblower programs can reduce rewards in regulated industries without diminishing their impact. Our findings are robust to environmental regulation being endogenous, production costs being convex, and firms competing in prices.
Biography: Felix Muñoz-Garcia is Professor in Economics at Washington State University, USA. His field of research is industrial organization and environmental regulation, and has published articles in journals such as International Journal of Industrial Organization, Review of Industrial Organization, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Environmental and Resource Economics, among others. He has co-authored different textbooks with Ana Espinola-Arredondo, including Intermediate Microeconomic Theory: Tools and Step-by-Step Examples (2020) at MIT Press; Common Pool Resources: Strategic Behavior, Inefficiencies, and Incomplete Information (2021) at Cambridge University Press; and Game Theory: An Introduction with Step-by-Step Examples (2023) at Palgrave-MacMillan. He is also editor-in-chief of the Lecture Notes in Economics and Policy book series for World Scientific Publishers, and associate editor for Economic Inquiry.
