The US Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulation mandates, subject to a civil penalty, producers to achieve a certain fleet average fuel economy on sales of new passenger cars. Analysing the incentive effects of CAFE, we find that it affords differential tax treatment to car models with...

This paper discusses the design of appropriate institutions for trade policy-making in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on US and EU experience it argues that legislatures should set the broad parameters, leaving commodity-specific detail to the executives. Sectoral Ministries, e.g. of...

In this paper we analyze the impact of government and private ownership of banks on firms’ probability to innovate. We estimate firms’ decision to innovate and their selection of a main lender for a sample of 9000 German manufacturing companies. Since these two decisions may be...

Water use in the U.S. has followed a remarkable pattern since 1950, not mimicking the almost uninterrupted 110 percent increase in the size of the U.S. population, the relatively steady 570 percent growth in real GDP, and the 220 percent improvement in per capita GDP. After doubling between 1950...

In most developed countries, the provision of water is organized at a local level. The costs and tariffs vary significantly, even between adjacent water utilities. Such heterogeneity is an obvious indication of the sector’s overall inefficiency and stresses a need for institutional...

This Paper analyses the effects of ownership structure on corporate environmental performance and examines the link from financial performance to environmental performance in a transition economy. In particular, it analyses these ownership effects and this performance link using an unbalanced...

This paper provides a quantitative comparison of the main architectures for an agreement on climate policy. Possible successors to the Kyoto protocol are assessed according to four criteria: economic efficiency; environmental effectiveness; distributional implications; and their political...

The literature on international environmental agreements has recognized the role transfers play in encouraging participation in international environmental agreements (IEAs), but the few results achieved so far are overly specific and do not exploit the full potential of transfers for successful...

This paper reviews the empirical evidence on the relationship between economic output and various dimensions of air and water quality. Pollution may rise with growth, because an increased scale of economic activity means more emissions, ceteris paribus. Economic growth may be associated with a...

Carbon dioxide emissions may cause global warming. But own emissions have negligible effects for a small nation, which may thus regard carbon taxes as distortionary. Such taxes may have other effects, however. When research and development (R&D) has positive external effects, carbon taxes may...