This paper aims to help policy makers identify how standards can contribute to the effective and cost-efficient development and deployment of eco-innovations (innovations that result in a reduction of environmental impact). To that end we discuss what standards are, how the process of...

What do we know about the size of the rebound effect? Should we believe claims that energy efficiency improvements lead to an increase in energy use? This paper clarifies what the rebound effect is, and provides a guide for economists and policymakers interested in its magnitude. We describe how...

We study the driving forces behind the adoption of environmental innovations (EI) in the Italian industry over 2006-2008 through analyses of the new wave of Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data that covered for the first time environmental innovation adoptions. We investigate whether the first...

This paper presents the first empirical test of the green paradox hypothesis, according to which well-intended but imperfectly implemented policies may lead to detrimental environmental outcomes due to supply side responses. We use the introduction of the Acid Rain Program in the U.S. as a case...

This paper discusses the merits and limits of the recent European energy policy aimed at reducing carbon emissions, devoting particular attention to the European Trading System of carbon permits and to the measures that the European Union has adopted to promote renewable energy sources. From the...

Fiscal considerations may shift governmental priorities away from environmental concerns: Finance ministers face strong demand for public expenditures such as infrastructure investments but they are constrained by international tax competition. We develop a multi-region model of tax competition...

There is growing impetus for a domestic U.S. climate policy that can provide meaningful reductions in emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. I describe and analyze an up- stream, economy-wide CO2 cap-and-trade system which implements a gradual trajectory of emissions reductions (with...

There is growing impetus for a domestic U.S. climate policy that can provide meaningful reductions in emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. In this article, I propose and analyze a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically feasible approach for the United States to...

This paper provides analyses of municipal waste generation and landfill diversion dynamics based on an 8-year panel dataset for Italy covering 103 provinces. Although absolute declining for waste generation is a long way off, there are some first signals of increasing relative delinking and...

We empirically test delinking of waste dynamics with regard to economic growth and the effectiveness of environmental and specific waste-related policies, by exploiting a newly constructed, integrated waste-economic-policy dataset based on official data for the EU15 for 1995-2007. We find that...