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On the economics of Sámi reindeer herding: Policy analysis to reduce overgrazing and conflicts

Tildelt: kr 2,0 mill.

The objective of this project is to analyse the effects of different types of economic policies on reindeer abundance, grazing quality and income. In particular, we will focus on subsidized slaughtering, grazing fees and reindeer quotas. The impact of quo tas will be studied in combination with fines on illegal holdings. Existing literature suggests that reindeer herders have preferences over both income from slaughtering and the size of the reindeer stock. Further, the performance of different economic policies depends on whether the regulating authorities knows the preferences, or not. For instance, if the authorities wrongly believe that the herders only have preferences over income, then subsidiezed slaughtering aimed at reducing the number of reinde er may instead increase the reindeer stock. In this project a household survey will be carried out among Northern and Southern Sámi reindeer herders in order to reveal their preferences. Besides preferences, the questionnaire will focus on income, product ion practises, stock size, grazing pattern and conflicts. The data will also be used to analyse what determines the size of a reindeer stock. We will in particular focus on culture and traditions, as well as economic explanatory variables. The project is also based on bio-economic modelling. This part of the project focuses on herdsman behaviour and the interaction between reindeer abundance and grazing quality. An analysis of whether reindeer herders respond as intended to different types of policies, o r not, will be carried out. Besides unknown preferences, the regulating authorities may suffer from information problems which affect the impact of economic policies. In particular we will focus on asymmetric information between the regulating authority a nd the resindeer herders caused by illegal holdings. The performance of quotas in presence of such an asymmetry will be analysed.

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NATURNAER-Natur og næring