Acceptable regulation of a common resource.

Summary The thesis studies the choice of acceptable regulatory instruments ("pareto improvers") in order to reduce the exploitation of a common resource exploited by heterogeneous individuals in open access. Using a broad methodological spectrum, we experimentally test the hypotheses retained in the theoretical model, and evaluate the effectiveness of different public policies in a specific case. The introductory chapter formulates our analytical framework and the problematic of the thesis. Chapter 2 examines the short-run impact of three regulations, a tax/subsidy, a transferable and a non-transferable quota, under the following policy feasibility constraint: no agent should lose relative to the extraction he or she was getting under open access. We find that market instruments, i.e., the tax/subsidy system and transferable quotas, achieve a greater and more efficient reduction in the level of exploitation of the common pool resource than non-transferable quotas. However, both market instruments increase inequality, while non-transferable quotas decrease it. In Chapter 3 we test in a laboratory experiment these three regulators imposed by a regulator in a common pool game. The theory thus predicts that all regulations reduce open access exploitation without reducing individual welfare. We find that the exploitation reduction objective is achieved for each instrument, albeit with greater variance for the tax system. Both market instruments select the most efficient agents on the common resource, with a better performance for tax/subsidy, but this instrument leads to a higher degree of inequality. None of the three regulations satisfies the acceptability constraint. Note that the non-transferable quota is the instrument that least satisfies this condition. Chapter 4 reviews the state of fisheries management in Lake Annecy, where two groups of fishermen share the resource (amateurs and professionals). The development of recreational fishing has often generated conflicts and today, together with commercial fishing, exerts a very strong pressure on the resource. Despite well-defined regulations for each party, the tensions between the various actors make their enforcement difficult. The economic analysis reveals three important elements: (i) the rearing rules are unfavorable to professional fishermen. (ii) the atypical fish market in Annecy. (iii) the problem of "monitoring" the regulations on the lake. We are studying the implementation of new regulation instruments to respond to the conflicts between the two groups of fishermen.