We develop a multiple-firm model of an industry's voluntary adoption of environmental protection measures to achieve a predetermined industry-wide emissions reduction target under an explicit threat of imposition of an emissions tax. We examine the free-riding incentive of individual firms and...

We consider a setting where firms undertake emission-reducing R&D and the regulator, who sets the emission tax, is unable to commit credibly. Firms are subject to research spillovers in emission reduction. We examine two regimes with respect to the organization of R&D: independent R&D and an...

Increasingly popular tailored regulation (TR) initiatives like EPA's Project XL allow plants to voluntarily substitute site-specific environmental performance standards for command-and-control regulations that dictate pollution abatement strategies. TR can significantly reduce participants'...

I model environmental overcompliance as a signalling device. In the model, a benevolent government may or may not tighten environmental standards. Production costs under the stricter environmental regulation are private information to the firms, and tightening environmental policy is socially...

An increasingly popular instrument for solving environmental problems is the "public voluntary agreement (VA)", in which government offers modest technical assistance and positive publicity to firms that reach certain environmental goals. Prior papers treat such agreements as a superior,...

We present an explicit model of firm-regulator negotiations in a market with several firms. We describe how the regulatory surplus is distributed between firms and regulator, and analyse the impact of various oligopoly parameters on the resulting level of environmental regulation. Our main...

The paper explores the impact of a third-party product ecolabel (i.e. green label) on competition and the environment, and the firms' strategies during the negotiation of the minimum environmental requirements underlying a product's eligibility for the ecolabel. The introduction includes some...

This paper looks at the efficiency implications of differences in secondary school design. The key aspect we focus on is the degree of differentiation between vocational and general education. Using a simple model of endogenous job composition, we study the interaction between relative demand...