We investigate whether the future relationships between several pollutants and per capita income in rich countries may assume the inverted U-forms of Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC). The emission-augmenting effect of scaling up aggregate economic activity may be counteracted by greener...

Many economists maintain that environmental regulations hamper productivity growth. However, recently, an opposing view has gained advocates. Indeed, it has been suggested that the empirically detected inverse relationship between environmental regulations and productivity growth is an almost...

According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) literature, several mechanisms within rich economies, including increased willingness to conduct abatement policies, contribute to reduce environmental problems. Unilateral environmental policies in open economies may affect other countries...

It has been claimed that good environmental performance can improve firms' economic performance. However, because of e.g. data limitations, the methods applied in most previous quantitative empirical studies of the relationship between environmental and economic performance of firms suffer from...

Pollution intensive production can be avoided domestically by increased imports and less exports of dirty products. Such trade effects may imply more emissions abroad, or pollution leakages. We study whether such leakages may contribute to the observed inverted relationship between emissions and...

We analyze two mechanism designs for refunding emission payments to polluting firms; Output Based (OB) and Expenditure Based (EB) refunding. In both instruments, emissions fees are returned to the polluting industry, possibly making the policy more easily accepted by policymakers than a standard...

In this paper, we develop an integrated cost-benefit analysis framework for ozone and fine particulate control, accounting for variability and uncertainty. The framework includes air quality simulation, sensitivity analysis, stochastic multi-objective air quality management, and stochastic...

The performance of the industrial point-source water pollution abatement program in the U.S. Clean Water Act is examined. I begin with a brief description of the statute and then turn to a description of the process used to develop the rules that govern effluent discharges. This is followed by a...

For years economists have urged policymakers to use market-based approaches such as cap-and-trade programs or emission taxes to control pollution. The SO2 allowance market created by Title IV of the 1990 U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) presents the first real test of the wisdom of...

In this study we use datasets from the 1995 and 2000 Community Water Supply surveys to examine the production costs of water supply systems. We first estimate the economies of scale in water supply by estimating the total unit cost as well as individual component cost elasticities. For total...