Environmental economics assumes that reliance on price signals, adjusted for externalities, normally leads to efficient solutions to environmental problems. We explore a limiting case, when market volatility created "mixed signals": waste paper and other recycled materials were briefly worth an...

Market based policies are fast becoming the recommended policy panacea for all the world's environmental problems. Implicit in such recommendations is the theory that free markets, adjusted for externalities, can always create an "efficient" allocation of society's resources. As a result, many...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had a profound impact on corn trade between the United States and Mexico. Negotiated tariff reductions and the Mexican government’s decision not to charge some tariffs to which it was entitled resulted in a doubling of US corn exports to Mexico....