Public disclosure programs that collect and disseminate information about firms’ environmental performance are increasingly popular in both developed and developing countries. Yet little is known about whether they actually improve environmental performance, particularly in the latter setting.

Because conventional command-and-control environmental regulation often performs poorly in developing countries, policymakers are increasingly experimenting with alternatives, including voluntary regulatory programs. Research in industrialized countries suggests that such programs are sometimes ineffective, because they mainly attract relatively clean participants free-riding on unrelated pollution control investments.

Weak environmental regulatory institutions in developing countries often undermine conventional command-and-control pollution control policies. As a result, these countries are increasingly experimenting with alternative approaches aimed at leveraging nonregulatory “green” pressures applied by local communities, capital markets, and consumers.

This paper analyzes the effects of the interaction between technology adoption and incomplete enforcement on the extent of violations and the rate of abatement technology adoption. We focus on price-based and quantity-based emission regulations. First, we show that in contrast to uniform taxes, under tradable emissions permits (TEPs), the fall in permit price produced by technology adoption reduces the benefits of violating the environmental regulation at the margin and leads firms to modify their compliance behavior.

Colombia's discharge fee system for water effluents is often held up as a model of a well-functioning, economic incentive pollution control program in a developing country. Yet few objective evaluations of the program have appeared.

Hamstrung by weak institutions that undermine conventional environmental regulatory tools, policymakers in developing countries are increasingly turning to voluntary approaches. To date, however, there have appeared few evaluations of these policy experiments.

In developing countries, the rapid proliferation of informal firms – low-technology unlicensed micro-enterprises – is having significant environmental impacts. Yet environmental management authorities typically ignore such firms.