Investigation of reverse auctions for wetland restoration in Manitoba

• Author / Creator

  Packman, Katherine

• Reverse auctions for ecological goods and services are an alternative to current agri-environmental government programs to provide incentives for farmers. This thesis reports on a testbed of laboratory auction experiments to assess efficiency and cost effectiveness of different design treatments. These were developed using estimated costs of wetland restoration in southern Manitoba. The testbed included a comparison of payment type (discriminatory versus uniform payments), and ranking rule for both budget based and target based auctions over repeated auction rounds and reserve prices for the target based auctions. It was found that 1) uniform payments outperformed discriminatory payments under a budget constraint, 2) discriminatory payments were superior to uniform payments under a target constraint, 3) where there is no budget constraint a reserve price can greatly increase efficiency and cost effectiveness. These findings highlight the complexity of auction design and may be used as an aid to guide policy decisions and agri-environmental program design.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Reverse auction
  • Wetland restoration
  • Experimental auctions

• Graduation date

  Fall 2010

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R35D9Z

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.