Location Choice by Households and Polluting Firms: An Evolutionary Approach

environmental policy;game theory;household economics;pollution;location choice

Environmental Liability and Organizational Structure

This paper presents a multitask principal-agent model to examine how environmental liability rules for individual managers within a corporate hierarchy affect, on the one hand, the incentive schemes the organization provides and, on the other hand, the choice between a functional or a product-based organizational structure. If managers are risk neutral, a product-based organization dominates a functional organization and allows to obtain first-best effort level. If, moreover, there are no diseconomies of span, both organizational forms are equivalent. It is also shown that for the dominant function, effort levels are higher in a product-based organization than in a functional one. With risk averse managers, no organizational structure dominates the other in general, but we are able to identify under which conditions it does not matter who is held liable for environmental damages.contracts, liability, firm structure, principal-agent

Market Structure and Technology Diffusion Incentives under Alternative Environmental Policy Schemes

market structure;diffusion;incentives;environmental policy;product differentiation

Innovation and environmental stringency:The case of sulfur dioxide abatement

A weak version of the Porter hypothesis claims that strict environmental policy provides positive innovation incentives, hence triggering improved competitiveness and securing environmental quality.In a comparative way, this paper empirically tests this hypothesis across countries by linking environmental stringency to innovation proxied by patents in the field of SO2 abatement over the period 1970-2000.Three different models of environmental stringency are examined.Two of these models do not reveal a positive significant effect on innovation as a result of increased stringency.In the theoretically preferred model, however, a positive relationship between environmental stringency and innovation is obtained.

Inciting protocols - how international environmental agreements trigger knowledge transfers

This paper shows that international environmental agreements (IEAs) may have large impacts on both invention and international knowledge transfers of new technology. Using a uniquely constructed patent data set on SO2 abatement technologies filed in 15 signatory and non-signatory countries in the period 1970-1997, we study the timing of these inventions and their diffusion in detail. Our data enable us to track intended knowledge di¤usion by separating so called mother patents, or original inventions, from family patents, which represent the same invention but are patents filed in foreign countries. We find that innovating firms file both types of patent applications before the protocols are actually implemented. Moreover, the filing of patents abroad (‘families’) is particularly strong in the countries that cooperate through the international protocols, i.e., the signatory countries. Our results suggest that firms are aware of the potential private benefits of such international agreements and exploit potential advantages of larger product markets by seeking protection in countries that participate in the protocols

The impact of information provision on agglomeration bonus performance : an experimental study on local networks

This research was funded by the European Investment Bank (EIB) under the EIB-University Research Action ProgrammeThe agglomeration bonus is an incentive mechanism to induce adjacent landowners to spatially coordinate their land use for the delivery of ecosystem services from farmland. This paper uses laboratory experiments to explore the performance of the agglomeration bonus in achieving the socially optimal land management configuration in a local network environment where the information available to subjects varies and the strategic setting is unfavorable for efficient coordination. The experiments indicate that if subjects are informed about both their direct and indirect neighbors' actions, they are more likely to produce the socially optimal configuration. Thus effectiveness of the policy can be improved by implementing information dissemination exercises among landowners. However given the adverse strategic setting, increased game experience leads to coordination failure and optimal land choices only at the localized level independent of the information available to subjects. Thus success of the agglomeration bonus scheme on real landscapes will have to take account of the roles of both information and experience on participant behavior.PostprintPeer reviewe

The multiple-use water services (MUS) project

The CPWF-supported project ‘Models for implementing multiple-use water supply systems for enhanced land and water productivity, rural livelihoods and gender equity’ (‘CPWF-MUS’) innovated, tested, and documented homestead-scale and communityscale models for Multiple Use water Services in 30 rural and peri-urban sites in 8 countries: the Andes (Bolivia and Colombia), Indus-Ganges (India, Nepal), Limpopo (South Africa and Zimbabwe), Mekong (Thailand) and Nile (Ethiopia). Learning alliances for scaling up and out of results were forged in each country, encompassing a total of 150 water user groups, CBOs, (I)NGOs, domestic sub-sector and productive sub-sector agencies, local government, private service providers, rural development agencies and financers, and knowledge centers. The resulting institutional change at intermediate and national level, together with awareness raising about the MUS models at global level, contributed significantly to a more supportive environment for reaching all water users with the multiple-use water services they need and, thus, using water most effectively to achieve all MDG