Improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of supply-side waste management are necessary in many countries. In Japan, municipalities with limited budgets have delayed the introduction of new waste-management technologies. Thus, the central government has used subsidies to encourage...

The literature on trade openness, economic development, and the environment is largely inconclusive about the environmental consequences of trade. This study treats trade and income as endogenous and estimates the overall impact of trade openness on environmental quality using the instrumental...

The environmental performance of a listed firm could affect its level of investment in pollution prevention and its access to financial markets. Previous studies using Tobin’s q that explore market response to environmental performance do not distinguish between the impact of performance on...

Governments in developed countries have implemented various regulations to manage air pollutants from automobiles, such as emission standards and subsidies for low emission vehicles. Japan is a unique example of a country that has overcome the severe air pollution of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and...

Using Japanese facility-level data from an OECD survey, we estimate the effects of implementation of ISO14001 and publication of environmental reports on the facilities' environmental performance. While most previous studies focused on an index of emissions toxicity, this study examines three...

This article proposes a Bayesian estimation method of demand functions under block rate pricing, focusing on increasing one. Under this pricing structure, price changes when consumption exceeds a certain threshold and the consumer faces a utility maximization problem subject to a...

This paper seeks to understand the effect of social, economic and political conditions on the selection and effectiveness of voluntary policy in Japan. Borrowing from two sets of literature, the paper develops a two-dimensional framework for analysis of voluntary policy that helps clarify the...