Agriculture is a significant source of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHG mitigation through agri‐environmental programmes could be important in achieving emission reduction targets under the 2015 UN climate agreement. This study uses the principal‐agent model to examine a peatland retirement programme to reduce agricultural emissions in Norway. The focus is on the role of the government's private information in programme design. Two cases are examined. First, optimal contracts are derived when farmers have private information about the costs of implementing peat land retirement, but the government reveals its information on the resulting public benefits through differentiated contracts. This corresponds to the standard targeting strategy with one‐sided information asymmetry. In the second case, an informed principal model developed by Maskin and Tirole in a 1990 study is employed to address bilateral information asymmetry. Using the informed principal model, the government offers the same menu of contracts to farmers in order not to disclose information on the public benefits from land retirement. Empirical results show that the government can achieve a higher payoff by using a pooling offer.

中文翻译：

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农业环境政策设计中的双边信息不对称：在挪威泥炭地退休中的应用

农业是全球温室气体（GHG）排放的重要来源。通过农业环境计划减少温室气体对于实现2015年联合国气候协议规定的减排目标可能很重要。本研究使用委托代理模型研究了减少挪威农业排放的泥炭地退休计划。重点是政府私人信息在程序设计中的作用。检查了两种情况。首先，当农民掌握有关实施泥炭地退耕成本的私人信息时，就可以得出最优合同，但是政府通过有区别的合同来披露其由此产生的公共利益信息。这与具有单方面信息不对称性的标准定位策略相对应。在第二种情况下 由Maskin和Tirole在1990年的研究中开发的一个知情的主要模型用于解决双边信息不对称问题。政府使用知情的主体模型，向农民提供相同的合同菜单，以免透露有关土地退还的公共利益信息。实证结果表明，政府可以通过使用联合优惠来获得更高的回报。