Public and private transaction costs in agri-environmental schemes : a case study on a site-specific grassland extensification scheme in Hesse, Germany
Agri-environmental schemes (AES) have become the most important policy instrument of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to foster the provision of environmental goods via agriculture. Farmers receive public payments when they carry out agri-environmental commitments. Besides the costs for payments to farmers, transaction costs - as scheme organizational costs - emerge for both farmers and implementing administrations.This cumulative thesis addresses some unexplored aspects. It explains intra-scheme variances in magnitude and composition of public as well as private TCs with the help of a case study approach, taking the influence of the regulatory framework of the CAP explicitly into account. With the help of both quantitative and qualitative data and methods, the thesis investigates Reasons for differences in private TCs (Article 1, see chapter 5) Influences of the CAP/EAFRD regulations on public TCs and resulting spillovers onto private TCs (Article 2, see chapter 6), Differences in local public TCs (Article 3, see chapter 7).Overall, the results reveal that a) the EAFRD regulations set the framework for AES design and implementation and thus influences the magnitude of both public and private TCs, b) the CAP framework causes allocative and distributive effects on both public and private TCs in Hesse and thus affects TC composition and incidence, and finally c) the degree of this impact varies subject to foremost actor-related factors, which d) provides an explanation for intra-scheme TC variances. By this, the results of the thesis complement and extend existing findings and may help for the future design of agri-environmental schemes.
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