Environmental Economics — Bobbi Herzberg on Climate Change and Polycentricity

Welcome back to the Environmental Economics series, hosted by Jordan Lofthouse. On this episode, he interviews Bobbi Herzberg on a polycentric approach to solving climate change. Bobbi and Jordan discuss the importance and meaning of "polycentricity", how we can vote with our feet, major themes from public choice, Elinor Ostrom's work on climate change, and the six advantages that polycentric systems have for coping with climate change: (1) competition among decision makers, (2) cooperation among decision makers, (3) perceptions of legitimacy that lead to coproduction, (4) mutual learning through experimentation, (5) institutional resilience/robustness, and (6) emergent outcomes that are socially desirable but not centrally planned.

Bobbi Herzberg is a Distinguished Senior Fellow for the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and a Senior Research Fellow. Previously, she served as assistant director of individual freedom & free markets at the John Templeton Foundation, as administrative director of The Institute of Political Economy, and as president of the Public Choice Society from 2014-2016.

Referenced Works: Jordan and Bobbi's "The Continuing Case for a Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change", Elinor Ostrom's "A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change"