The use of voluntary approaches to achieve environmental improvements has grown dramatically in the United States since they were first introduced thirteen years ago. As of 2004, there are over 50 voluntary programs in the U.S. at the federal level alone. These programs take a variety of forms,...

Voluntary approaches have become a popular in the U.S. to enhance the efficacy and scope of existing regulations and to reduce emissions in sectors or for pollutants where formal environmental regulation is lacking. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of a particular EPA voluntary...

This paper uses data on purchases of Nordic Swan Eco-labeled toilet paper and paper towels by individual Danish households to analyze the determinants of demand for eco-labeled goods and the decision process underlying it. Among several models that are estimated, a double-hurdle model that...

This paper uses data on purchases of Nordic Swan Eco-labeled toilet paper and paper towels by individual Danish households to analyze the determinants of demand for eco-labeled goods and the decision process underlying it. Among several models that are estimated, a double-hurdle model that...

This classroom exercise illustrates the Tiebout (1956) hypothesis that residential sorting across multiple jurisdictions leads to a more efficient allocation of local public goods. The exercise places students with heterogeneous preferences over a public good into a single classroom community. A...

Governments often enact information provision policies to overcome asymmetric information of product qualities. We show that increasing awareness among consumers of the quality of a good can (but will not always) encourage firms to produce goods with higher levels of quality. Even if product...

Tropical deforestation is considered one of the major environmental disasters of the 20th century, although there have been few careful studies of its causes. This paper examines the causes of deforestation in Thailand between 1976 and 1989, a period when the country lost 28% of its forest...

This paper examines the effect that biofuels production has had on commodity and global food prices. The innovative contribution of this paper is the interactive spreadsheet that allows the reader to choose the assumptions behind the estimates. By allowing the reader to choose the country, time...

The woodlands in some parts of the Sahel are effectively an open-access resource. Under open access, fuelwood cutters have no incentive to allow for benefits that might accrue if the wooded area were managed rather than mined. Those benefits include sustainable streams of fuelwood, fruits, and...

In this study, we examine the effects of chronic exposure to air pollution on asthma exacerbation through a cross-sectional analysis of asthma prescriptions for quick-relief medications at the 5 digit zip code level in California. Using information on the use of maintenance therapies by each...