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...

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...

Since the outset of the Real Plan, Brazil has made considerable progress in economic stabilisation, although privatisation has so far been incomplete. This study aims at answering a number of questions emerging from the Brazilian privatisation experience. To what extent have sell-offs been...

Implementation of policies aimed at reducing atmospheric emissions has drawn attention to the need to integrate policies aimed at protection of the environment into other policy areas such as energy. In this paper we are concerned with the interaction of environmental policies aimed at reducing...

This paper explores some costs associated with environmental regulation. We focus on regulation pertaining to ground-level ozone (O3) and its effects on two manufacturing industries — industrial organic chemicals (SIC 2865-9) and miscellaneous plastic products (SIC 308). Both are major...

The US government has decidedly moved towards encouraging co-operation in research and development (R&D) between firms, universities, and other research institutes since the early 1980s. The Republican Administration in the early 1980s set the stage for a radical shift in market environment...

This paper explores the various policies implemented in Italy to foster innovative activities and to regulate the technological effects on market competition and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Research promotion has primarily taken the form of facilitated credits and grants to stimulate R&D...

The process of assigning property rights to land in the American Great Plains resulted in farms that were too small to be economically viable. These farms were prime contributors to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The path dependence resulting from the initial assignment of property rights on the...

The joint evolution of participating and complying firms in a public VA, along with the evolution of the pollution stock is examined. Replicator dynamics modeling participation and compliance are combined with pollution stock dynamics. Fast-slow selection dynamics are used to capture the fact...

Short-term auctions for access to entry terminals of the British gas-network appear to successfully allocate scarce resources and capture scarcity rent. Now long-term auctions are being introduced to guide future capacity expansion decisions. In our model the fraction of rights issued in the...