Costs of environmental regulations, although relatively small, can be critical in the competitiveness of a product since the cost advantages of producers in one country are often very slim. Additional costs derived from new regulations are a factor in the continued importance of exports and of...

The paper presents two simple models of dynamic consumer behavior, both taking into consideration the implications for welfare measurement when agents can delay transactions while obtaining additional information. One model studies the effect when a purchased good is non-perishable and can be...

This paper provides a formal analysis of the welfare and trade implications of eco-labeling schemes. A simple model of vertical (quality) differentiation captures major stylized features of the textiles market in which trading takes place between an industrialized North (domestic) and a...

Pigouvian taxes are typically imposed in situations where there is imperfect knowledge on the extent of damage caused by a producing firm. A regulator imposing imperfectly informed Pigouvian taxes may cause the firms that should (should not) produce to shut down (produce). In this paper we use a...

The value-of-statistical-life (VSL) approach is used by environmental economists to value mortality changes resulting from environmental improvement, such as decreased urban air pollution. Because of scarce data, VSL estimates are not available for developing countries. Using robust regression...

The Kyoto Protocol represents the first international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Proposed mitigation efforts may involve the agricultural sector through such options as planting trees, crop and livestock management changes, and biofuels production. The combined use of these...

In this paper, we examine the design of permit trading programs when the objective is to minimize the cost of achieving an ex ante pollution target, that is, one that is defined in expectation rather than an ex post deterministic value. We consider two potential sources of uncertainty, the...

Environmental Kuznets Curve depicts the long-term relationship between pollution and economic growth. It hypothesizes that during the initial stages of economic growth environmental quality will deteriorate, then, after reaching some turning point, it will improve as the economy grows. In the...

Why do some countries establish their own national eco-labeling programs and some do not? In this paper, we provide both theoretical arguments and empirical evidence suggesting that the answer to this question can shed new light on three questions that have taken center-stage in the trade and...

This paper examines equilibrium properties of local jurisdictions implied by the Tiebout-style model. A set of equilibrium conditions are derived from a general equilibrium model of local jurisdictions. The conditions are parameterized and empirically estimated in a two-stage procedure. The...