Public Disclosure Programs vs. Traditional Approaches for Environmental Regulation: Green Goodwill and the Policies of the Firm

A Public Disclosure Program (PDP) is compared to a traditional environmental regulation (exemplified by a tax/subsidy) in a simple dynamic framework. A PDP aims at revealing the environmental record of firms to the public. This information affects its image (goodwill or brand equity), and ultimately its profit. In our model, this impact is endogenous, i.e., a firm polluting less than its prescribed target would win consumer's sympathy and raises its goodwill, whereas it is the other way around when the firm exceeds its emissions quota. The evolution of this goodwill is assumed to depend also on green activities or advertising expenditures. Within this framework, we analyse how a PDP affects the firm's optimal policies regarding emissions, pricing and advertising as compared to a traditional regulation. We show that advertising acts as a complementary device to pricing and that emissions are increasing in goodwill. We also conclude that the effects of a PDP are more pronounced than those of traditional instruments for firms with a high goodwill. Moreover, we study under which conditions a PDP may be profit improving and we connect this issue to the possibility that a PDP can induce firms to overcomply with the standard. The numerical value of the emission target is rather innocuous in a market-based setting but it turns to be a crucial variable in the presence of a PDP. The theoretical results are complemented with a numerical illustration.Market-based Environmental Regulation, Public Disclosure Program, Pricing, Advertising, Goodwill, Optimal Control.

Panel cointegration: Long-run relationship between internet, electricity consumption and economic growth. Evidence from OECD countries

The linkage between electricity consumption, internet demand and economic growth is aimed to investigate in this study in 35 OECD countries for the period 1993-2014. Panel cointegration, Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS), Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) and Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality tests were performed to capture the potential long-run and causal linkages among the three variables. The findings from the FMOLS and DOLS models indicate a positive linkage between electricity, internet demand and economic growth in the long-run. Results from the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality confirm feedback causality between electricity consumption and internet demand and unilateral causality running from economic growth to electricity consumption

Évaluation d'un projet de modernisation; par la méthode des effets et celle des prix de référence

Rapport de rechercheNuméro de référence interne originel : a1.1 g 91

Public Disclosure Programs vs. traditional approaches for environmental regulation: Green goodwill and the policies of the firm

A Public Disclosure Program (PDP) is compared to a traditional environmental regulation (exemplified by a tax/subsidy) in a simple dynamic framework. A PDP aims at revealing the environmental record of firms to the public. This information affects its image (goodwill or brand equity), and ultimately its profit. A firm polluting less than its prescribed target would win consumer's sympathy and raise its goodwill, whereas it is the other way around when the firm exceeds its emissions quota. The evolution of this goodwill is assumed to depend also on green activities or advertising expenditures. Within this framework, we analyze how a PDP affects the firm's optimal policies regarding emissions, pricing and advertising as compared to a traditional regulation. We show that advertising acts as a complementary device to pricing and that emissions are increasing in goodwill. The role of a standard or target level for emissions turns out to be totally different under both policy regimes. In the case of a tax/subsidy approach, this target level only acts as constant who increases or decreases profit by a fixed amount, but it does not affect the policy of the firm. On the contrary, if a PDP is implemented, the target value for emissions enters in an important way in the goodwill accumulation mechanism and determines how the firm reacts to the regulation and what is the time path for the economic and environmental variables. Moreover, this value is also crucial to determine the possibility that a PDP is profit improving. A policy implication of this fact is that regulators should be particularly careful in fixing the emission standard when a PDP is applied. The theoretical results are complemented with a numerical illustration.Market-based environmental regulation Public Disclosure Program Pricing Advertising Goodwill Optimal control