This thesis consists of an introductory part and three papers. <p> Paper [I] examines how taxes affect consumption of commodities that are detrimental to health and the environment. Specifically, this paper examines if a tax increase leads to a significantly larger change in consumption than a...</p>

This paper reviews and summarizes most of the literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), focusing mainly on disentangling and clarifying the key concepts underlying the two classes of existing theoretical explanations for the EKC occurrence — those driven by technology and those...

We use a panel dataset of about 5,000 Lithuanian firms between 2003 and 2010, to assess the impact of the EU ETS on the environmental and economic performance of participating firms. Using a matching methodology, we are able to estimate the causal impact of EU ETS participation on CO2 emissions,...

Natural disasters are on the rise worldwide. There are more and more intense natural disasters—which are defined to cause at least 100 deaths or to affect the basic survival needs of at least 1,000 people—resulting from floods and storms as well as droughts and heat waves. The Asia and the...

Qualitative and theoretical literature indicates public policies as a major driver in the development of renewables. This paper empirically tests this claim, within a context of several drivers of renewables, by focusing on a large panel of European countries. Given the presence of...

This paper provides new evidence on the determinants of environmental expenditure and investment. Also, by employing the Heckman selection models, we study how environmental expenditure and investment by Swedish industrial firms responded to the national and international policies directed to...

This paper tests the hypothesis that democratisation is conducive to less environmental depletion due to human activity. Using Interrupted Time Series (ITS) design for a panel of 47 transition countries and two indexes of pollution, CO2 emissions and PM10 concentrations, I find that democracies...

We investigate the relationships between water quality and socioeconomic factors in California at the county level for the years 1993 to 2006 using 24 water quality indicators coming from seven different types of water bodies. We estimate these relationships using three classes of models: the...

In this study we use historical emission data from installations under the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) to evaluate the impact of this policy on industrial greenhouse gas emissions during the first two trading phases (2005-2012). As such the analysis seeks to disentangle two...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) maintains networks of pollution monitors for two basic purposes: to check and enforce the attainment of national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) and to provide useful data for studying pollution and its effects. These purposes imply...