Pigovian regulation provides monetary penalties/rewards to incentivize prosocial behavior, and may thereby trigger behavioral effects beyond a more standard response associated with a change in relative prices. This paper quantifies the magnitude of these behavioral effects using data from an...

This paper first reviews the conceptual case for, and appropriate design of, fiscal policies to address major externalities associated with energy use-global warming, local air pollution, and various side effects (e.g., congestion) from motor vehicles. Techniques for (roughly) estimating the...

Pigou (1920) advocated for taxes, set equal to marginal damages, on goods produced and consumed that involve negative externalities. Samuelson (1954) laid out the conditions for optimal pure public goods provision, but noted that free-riding (the “demand revelation” problem) was likely to...

In this paper, we study regulation of externalities involving many small-scale polluters, where the damages from emissions depend on the polluters' locations. Examples include nutrient and pesticide emissions from farms, particulate emissions from vehicles and home heating units, emissions of...

We develop a dynamic regulation game for a stock externality under asymmetric information and future market uncertainty. Within this framework, regulation is characterized as the implementation of a welfare-maximization program conditional on informational constraints. We identify the most...

In this paper, we study regulation of externalities involving many small-scale polluters, where the damages from emissions depend on the polluters’ locations. Examples include nutrient and pesticide emissions from farms, particulate emissions from vehicles and home heating units, emissions of...

We study how public policies affects an economy where production emits pollutants and investment in productive assets raises the economy’s overall productivity. We explore two hypotheses about how the accumulation of pollutants affects human well-being. Under the first one, there is no limit...

In essence, any international environmental agreement (IEA) implies cooperation of a form or another. The paper seeks for logical foundations of this. It first deals with how the need for cooperation derives from the public good aspect of the externalities involved, as well as with where the...

We study the regulation of a morally responsible agent in the context of a negative consumption externality and motivation crowding. In particular, we analyze how various governmental interventions affect the agent’s motivation to assume moral responsibility. Employing a motivation-crowding...

France has a very ambitious environmental-policy agenda, aimed chiefly at cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but also at dealing with local air and water pollution, waste management and the conservation of biodiversity. The laws that followed the Grenelle de l’environnement encompass...