This paper explores the effects of effluent regulatory activity on firm behavior in the pulp and paper industry in Ontario. The model uses instrumental variables to attempt to distinguish between that correlation between emission limits and emissions coming from regulatory capture and that...

Sedimentation in river beds, which results in social disamenities, is caused by soil erosion in farmed ecosystems surrounding those rivers. This paper introduces a "spatial"" corrective tax on soil erosion. We find that the optimal tax rule will depart from the classical Pigouvian method...

Agents face an ambiguous risk of biodiversity survival as well as ambiguous expected losses from its extinction. As a collectivity, agents are faced with the option of privately funding the protection of biodiversity for biomedical research. We propose two evolutionary models of threshold public...

We derive corrective tax rules when firms are oligopolists whose production processes generate emissions that add to a stock of pollution that accumulates over time. In our model, firms play dynamic Cournot games among themselves, and the government designs a tax rule that corrects for both the...

We analyze the contract-based relationship between a local community and a private operator in charge of a water utility. An important feature of the regulation model is the existence of water network losses that may reduce the operator's cost. We derive solutions to the optimal contract both...

We characterize the distortions in environmental liability sharing between firms and banks that the imperfect implementation of government policies implies. These distortions stem from three factors: the presence of moral hazard, the use of objective functions by firms and banks that differs...

Using a structural model of the interactions between governments, firms and insurance companies, we characterise the distortions in environmental liability sharing between firms and insurance companies that the imperfect implementation of government policies implies. These distortions stem from...

Afforestation is a cost-effective way for some countries to meet part of their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and its eventual extensions. Credits for carbon sequestration can be mediated through markets for emissions permits. Both new and old forests are subject to pestilence and fire,...

It is possible to make a current valuation of the effects of carbon dioxide which tracks a valuation done under the metric of expected present value and also tracks realized values. The implementation of a carbon credit scheme based on green accounting could go as follows: L'évaluation des...

We use a real option approach to determine optimally when a social planner has to stop or resume logging in situations where an endangered species relies on forest habitat for its survival, and that habitat evolves stochastically. The model incorporates economic, ecological and social features,...