Empirical evidence evaluating the efficiency of economic instruments is still rare, despite significant theoretical advances over the last decades. The objective of this paper is to evaluate one form of environmental taxation, the French tax on air pollution from 1990-99. While starting out in...

We estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for better quality of tap water on a unique cross-section sample from 10 OECD countries. On the pooled sample, households are willing to pay 7.5% of the median annual water bill to improve the tap water quality. The highest relative WTP for better tap water...

In this paper we do an ex post evaluation of the French tax on air pollution. The revenues of this tax were redistributed to polluters in the form of subsidies to abatement technologies, and the policy is a typical example of an earmarked tax. We use a two-stage estimation procedure on an...

Empirical evidence evaluating the efficiency of economic instruments is still rare, despite significant theoretical advances over the last decades. The objective of this paper is to evaluate one form of environmental taxation, the French tax on air pollution from 1990-99. While starting out in...

We estimate hurdle rates for firms' investments in pollution abatement technology, using ex post data. The method is based on a structural option value model where the future price of polluting fuel is the major source of uncertainty facing the firm. The empirical procedure is illustrated using...

We propose a method for estimating hurdle rates for firms’ investments in pollution abatement technology, using ex post data. The method is based on a structural option value model where the future price of polluting fuel is the major source of uncertainty facing the firm. The econometric...

Using a unique cross-section sample from 10 OECD countries, we estimate willingness to pay for better quality of tap water. On the pooled sample, households are only willing to pay 7.5% of the median annual water bill to improve the quality of tap water. The highest relative willingness to pay...