The conventional wisdom about environmental protection is that it comes at an additional cost on firms imposed by the government, which may erode their global competitiveness. However, during the last decade, this paradigm has been challenged by a number of analysts. In particular, Porter...

Ecodesign is a method of designing products (goods and services) that takes into account their impact on the environment at all stages of their life cycle so as to minimize them. In order to promote ecodesign, it is necessary to see if it is profitable for the enterprises. Very little work has...

In this article, we highlight the factors which influence governments in their decision to implement environmental policies of varying degrees of severity. We substantiate our arguments with analytical evidence from public interest theory and the economic theory of regulation (interest group...

This paper examines the profile of workers who are willing to participate in a work sharing program by reducing their working hours. In contrast with national surveys which ask workers their intention about working hours reduction, we are dealing with Alcan's workers who have actually decided to...

We measure the effect of profit-sharing incentive schemes on productivity in the banking sector. We use data collected from the payroll records of different (and autonomous) branches of a Québec financial cooperative. Beginning in 1994, some of these branches introduced profit-sharing...

This paper examines how yhe Workers' Compensation (WC) and the Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs interact to influence the duration of claims due to workplace accidents. We use longitudinal WC administrative micro-data on more than 30,000 workers in the Quebec construction industry for the...

Economists have greatly criticized regulations that impose uniform environmental standards on plants which may differ in terms both of their marginal abatement cost and marginal damage functions. Such a critic ignores however that the implementation of the standards may vary significantly across...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the government subsidy that has been paid to workers of a large Canadian firm in the context of a work sharing program has been a profitable operation for the government. We find that it has not been financially viable for the provincial government...

This paper provides evidence that workers' compensation (WC) and unemployment insurance (UI)could affect not only the occurence of workplace accident claims, but also the composition of these reported accidents. Our theoretical framework predicts that, under plausible assumptions, an increase in...

This paper investigates the relative ability of two anti-smoking policies, taxes and regulation, in inducing cigarette demand reductions and in providing incentives to stop smoking (or not to start). The analysis is based on Canadian data at the provincial level for the period 1982-1995. Our...