When liability for environmental spills, product failures, or other types of accidents is imposed on firms with insufficient wealth, those firms may file for bankruptcy ---thereby becoming ''judgement proof''--- as soon as a major accident occurs. As a result, they are unlikely to choose...

This paper investigates the existing Italian regulation regarding the so-called "administration by agreements" and the possibility to adapt the existing legal system to voluntary agreements in the environmental field in the light of the European guidelines on this issue. The research consists of...

An environmental agreement in an oligopolistic market may violate the competition rules, as described in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty. Ordinarily, some collusion among firms is necessary for an environmental agreement to be successful. This collusion may be acceptable when it relates to the...

We study the bilateral exchange of information in the context of linear quadratic games. An information structure is here represented by a non directed network, whose nodes are agents and whose links represent sharing agreements. We first study the equilibrium use of information in any given...

In this article we apply and extend the model elaborated by Acemoglu and Verdier in their seminal paper (2000), to examine how the economy represented in their theoretical framework responds to an exogenous change in the agent's incentive. In particular, we focus on the consequences of a famous...

Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, economies in transition are eligible for both emissions trading (Article 17) and joint implementation (Article 6). Guiding rules for implementing these mechanisms were decided through the Marrakech Accords in November 2001. These countries may benefit substantially...

China is appraised to have the world's largest exploitable reserves of shale gas, although several legal, regulatory, environmental and investment-related issues will likely restrain its scope. China's capacity to successfully face these hurdles and produce commercial shale gas will have a...

Hedonic property value models are often used to place a value on localized amenities and disamenities. In practice, however, results may be affected by (i) omitted variable bias and (ii) whether homebuyers and sellers are aware of, and respond to, the assumed environmental measure. In this paper...

This paper analyzes the meaning of comparing the economic performance of strict liability and negligence rule in a unilateral standard accident model under Knightian uncertainty. It focuses on the cost expectation of major harm on which the injurers form beliefs. It shows first that, when the...

In the environmental area, negotiated rulemaking, implementation, and compliance are proposed by their advocates as delivering two primary benefits: reduced rulemaking time and decreased litigation over a final agency rule. The experience to date, however, indicates that negotiated rulemaking...