Three Essays in Behavioral Economics that Investigate the Effects of Present Bias in the Management of Renewable Resources

The thesis consists of three essays that analyze and study the effects of the present bias in the context of harvesting from a stock of renewable resources, showing this effect in the individual, collective and intergenerational frameworks. The first contribution shows and argues that the agent’s lifetime welfare is reduced by implementing a strategy dominated by the impulsivity inherent in the present bias. This result is showed assuming the existence of a dual system of discount in response to short- and long-term stimuli, where immediate rewards are processed by an impulsive system, while a reflective system is engaged in decisions about long-term rewards. The second essay shows that the behavior implemented by naïve agents, also if done with cooperative intent, can activate a dynamic of cascading defections from the cooperative strategy within the harvester group, where, the present biased preferences can trigger a strategy that directs the community to excessively increase the harvesting amounts despite the existence of cooperative intentions. The third contribution analyses the effects of the present bias in terms of reduction in the welfare of future generations, and shows that naïve behaviors conduct towards an amount of resources destined for the future generations, lesser than the quantity desired by the previous generation also in the presence of other-regarding preferences towards future generations. Furthermore, the third essay shows that if the social preferences of the individuals are not expressed exclusively by the spontaneous behavior of the agent, but are also expressed through a compliance with specific social norms charged with representing the individual's social preferences and designed to offer a commitment for the agent, a mitigation of the effect of present bias on the intergenerational equity can occur.