Researchers have utilized the fact that many states have term limits (as opposed to being eligible for re-election) for governors to determine how changes in electoral incentives alter state regulatory agency behavior. This paper asks whether these impacts spill over into private sector...

The author analyzes the optimal investment in environmental protection in a model of an infinite series of non-overlapping hyperbolically discounting agents. He shows that without a commitment mechanism society is eventually stuck in a situation where all agents prefer further investment in the...

Environmental policy often has to be devised under informational constraints, like uncertainty and asymmetric information. We consider an environmental policy that aims at reducing the welfare losses caused by asymmetric information while being sufficiently simple for implementation. In this...

The paper examines the determinants that influence the environmental innovation behaviour of companies in Germany in a multivariate context by using data from the Mannheimer Innovations Panel 1993, which was part of the Community Innovation Survey. The objective is to analyse the general...

Conventional wisdom argues that environmental policy is less costly if environmental policy induces the development of cleaner technologies. In contrast to this argument, we show that the cost of environmental policy (a reduction in emissions) may be larger with induced technical change than...

We analyze the formation of environmental policy to regulate transboundary pollution if governments are self-interested. In a common agency framework, we portray the environmental policy calculus of two political supportmaximizing governments that are in a situation of strategic interaction with...

We show that for a broad class of technologies the relationship between policy stringency and the rate of technology adoption is inverted U-shaped. This happens when the marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves of conventional and new technologies intersect, which invariably occurs when emissions...

The paper analyzes the welfare properties of voluntary agreements (VA) with polluters, when they are obtained under the legislative threat of an alternative stricter policy option. In the model, the threat is an abatement quota. Both the threat and its probability of implementation are...

Deindustrialisation, stagnant real incomes of production workers and increasing inequality are latter-day features of many economies. It's common to assume that such developments pressure policy-makers to relax environmental standards. However, when heavily polluting industries become less...