Rapid urbanization and increased industrialization have led to high pollution levels throughout Latin America. Economists tout policies based on market-based economic incentives as the most cost-effective methods for addressing a wide variety of environmental problems. This chapter examines...

Voluntary agreements (VAs) have been widely used in environmental policymaking over the past 20 years. This paper reviews relevant theoretical and empirical literature on VAs, assessing their performance in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is evaluated on three criteria: (i)...

Weak capacity to enforce regulations and sanction violators, and an emphasis on economic growth in developing countries has led to concerns about worsening environmental conditions and the potential for these countries becoming pollution havens for multinational corporations. International...

In recent years, International Political Economy literature on "politics beyond state" has emphasized the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in broader policy processes, both national and international. In addition to their impact on states, NGOs influence the policies of non-state...

We investigate how a class of voluntary environmental initiatives known as pollution prevention (“P2”) programs affect toxic pollution. We construct a data base on federal and state-level P2 programs and exploit variation in adoption dates and program characteristics to study their effects...

Self-regulation programs, in which industry associations set membership codes beyond government regulations, are prevalent despite scarce evidence on their effectiveness. We examine Responsible Care (RC) in the US chemical manufacturing sub-sector, whose membership codes include pollution...