The author looks at the effects of the choice between taxes and permits on the pattern of adoption of a new emissions abatement technology. The regulator determines the optimal ex-post amount of emissions before firms start to adopt the technology. Each firm decides when to adopt, considering benefits, costs, and advantage gained over their rivals, producing a sequence of adoption that is “diffused” into the industry over time.

Controversy over the EU import ban on food from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) forced the EU to change course and institute a mandatory labeling scheme. This study first examined how different policies for the production and use of GMOs might influence the market outcome in consumer food markets. Second, it evaluated the welfare effects of the policy measures, finding that mandatory labeling often increases both domestic welfare and global welfare, while trade bans more likely decrease global welfare.

Empirical evidence suggests that people’s risk-perceptions are often systematically biased. This paper develops a simple framework to analyse public policy when this is the case.

Environmentalists are often upset at the effect of discounting costs of future environmental damage, e.g., due to climate change. An often-overlooked message is that we should discount costs but also take into account the increase in the relative price of the ecosystem service endangered.

This article shows that fuel taxes serve a very important role for the environment and that we risk a backlash of increased emissions if they are abolished.

In permit trading systems, free initial allocation is common practice. A recent example is the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS).

In this paper, we discuss the effect of refunding environmental charges.

An optimal first-best road charge should not only be differentiated with respect to factors that affect the direct external environmental and time costs from the road-user himself.

Indirect effects, such as the fact that others’ cars will be more polluting when congestion increases, should also be taken into account.

Many argue that it is socially inefficient to use distributional weights in cost-benefit analysis, and that doing so implies large inefficiency losses, when distributional matters can be dealt with through income taxation, instead.

This paper formulates a bioeconomic model to analyze community incentives for wildlife management under benefit-sharing programs like the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe.