The formation of party preferences is a complex and not yet fully understood process based on a number of factors. This process, which is of great interest for both social and political science, is usually studied using questionnaire data which has proven to be a very reliable yet often costly...

In the past there was hardly any use of economic instruments in environmental policy, mainly command and control measures were used. More recently, ecological taxes as well as tradable permits became more popular and voluntary agreements have been imple-mented. Using the Public Choice ap-proach...