Center for Environmental Economics - Montpellier - Next events feed

BEE Seminar : Cooking Up Cooperation: Experimental Bargaining Mechanisms for Partition Function Games

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0200

Speaker: Michela Chessa
Address: UMR CEE-M Université Montpellier - Faculté d'économie ,195 Rue Vendémiaire, 34960 Montpellier

The experimental implementation of cooperative solution concepts has traditionally been confined to the framework of Transferable Utility (TU) games, where coalitional worths are independent of the surrounding coalition structure and the grand coalition is assumed to be uniquely efficient. This paper moves beyond these restrictive assumptions by studying bargaining and coalition formation in Partition Function Games, following the seminal framework of Thrall and Lucas (1963). In this richer setting, the worth of any coalition depends on the entire partition of players, thereby explicitly incorporating inter-coalitional externalities, which may be positive or negative. Furthermore, we allow for environments in which coalition structures composed of smaller groups of players may dominate the grand coalition in terms of aggregate efficiency, reflecting the coordination and communication costs that arise in large organizations. Within this framework, we propose the experimental implementation of two bargaining mechanisms designed to implement generalized Shapley value concepts as their equilibrium outcome: the procedure proposed by Hafalir (2007) and the one proposed by Maskin (2003). We compare the behavioral and efficiency properties of these two structured mechanisms against a free-form negotiation protocol inspired by Chessa et al. (2025), recently developed for TU games. Given the complexity of presenting a Partition Function Game in a laboratory setting, we propose a novel experimental bargaining procedure grounded in a culinary context. Co-auteurs : Yukihiko Funaki, Nobuyuki Hanaki, Aymeric Lardon, Takashi Yamada

EE Seminar : From Farm to Jobs at the Forest Frontier: An Experiment in the DR Congo

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0200

Speaker: Gracieux Mutaka
Address: UMR CEE-M Institut Agro de Montpellier / INRAE - Bat. 26 - Centre de documentation Pierre Bartoli 2 Place Viala 34000 Montpellier

Small-scale agriculture expansion accounts for 90 percent of natural habitat loss in Sub-Saharan Africa. The farmers at the forest frontier are rarely there by preference, but because market frictions trap them outside of off-farm jobs. These frictions sustain agricultural employment above its socially optimal level and impose an environmental externality: each new farmer who cannot access an off-farm job must expand cultivation, including into difficult-to-protect lands. Addressing these frictions could therefore improve workers' welfare while reducing pressure on natural habitats. We test this logic with a randomized controlled trial involving 1,324 young farmers near Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Our main intervention is a three-month guaranteed job placement in urban SMEs, designed to address migration costs, matching frictions, information asymmetries, and employment risk. A secondary treatment offers 10 days of local casual work as a status quo benchmark. We cross-randomize these interventions with an environmental education session to shift community attitudes towards the park. The internship increases migration by 16%, doubles formal employment one month after its end, and reduces farming days by 19%. Cultivated land area and support for the park are unaffected. After six months, migration remains while other effects fade. The casual work treatment produces null effects across the board. Environmental education do improve park perceptions slightly. Our results suggest that labor market interventions can reallocate workers away from the forest frontier, but that thin urban labor markets limit the scope for sustained structural transformation. Featuring Richard Nikiema (CEE-M) and Sébastien Desbureaux (CEE-M), who will present this project, carried out in collaboration with Stefan Dercon and Ashley Pople of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford.

EE Seminar : [Isabelle Méjean: to be announced]

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0200

Speaker: Isabelle Méjean
Address: UMR CEE-M Institut Agro de Montpellier / INRAE - Bat. 26 - Centre de documentation Pierre Bartoli 2 Place Viala 34000 Montpellier