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Biodiversity offset credits in New South Wales are transacted within a regulatory environment defined by detailed trading rules and many different types of biodiversity credits that can lead to thin markets and high transaction costs. This paper describes a market designed to facilitate efficient and effective transactions. The market includes a search algorithm to identify who can exchange with whom, according to the regulatory constraints, and an online exchange tool to facilitate efficient price discovery and allocation of offset contracts.

The Stochastic Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (SBDM) mechanism is a theoretically elegant way of eliciting incentive-compatible beliefs under a variety of risk preferences. However, the mechanism is complex and there is concern that some participants may misunderstand its incentive properties. We use a two-part design to evaluate the relationship between participants’ probabilistic reasoning skills, task complexity, and belief elicitation. We first identify participants whose decision-making is consistent and inconsistent with probabilistic reasoning using a task in which non-Bayesian modes of decision-making lead to violations of stochastic dominance. We then elicit participants’ beliefs in both easy and hard decision problems. Relative to Introspection, there is less variation in belief errors between easy and hard problems in the SBDM mechanism. However, there is a greater difference in belief errors between consistent and inconsistent participants. These results suggest that while the SBDM mechanism encourages individuals to think more carefully about beliefs, it is more sensitive to heterogeneity in probabilistic reasoning. In a follow-up experiment, we also identify participants with high and low fluid intelligence with a Raven task, and high and low proclivities for cognitive effort using an extended Cognitive Reflection Test. Although performance on these tasks strongly predict errors in both the SBDM mechanism and Introspection, there is no significant interaction effect between the elicitation mechanism and either ability or effort. Our results suggest that mechanism complexity is an important consideration when using elicitation mechanisms, and that participants’ probabilistic reasoning is an important consideration when interpreting elicited beliefs.

Market based instruments are proving increasingly effective in biodiversity procurement and in regulatory schemes to preserve biodiversity. The design of these policy instruments brings together issues in auction design, contract theory, biology, and monitoring technology. Using a mixed adverse selection, moral hazard model, we show that optimal contract design may differ significantly between procurement and regulatory policy environments.

Market based instruments are proving e¤ective in biodiversity procure- ment and in the management of regulatory schemes to preserve biodiversity. The design of these schemes brings together issues in auction design, con- tract theory, ecology, and monitoring. Using a mixed adverse selection, moral hazard procurement model, we show that optimal contract design may di¤er signi?cantly between procurement and regulatory policy environ- ments