Voluntary agreements (VAs) negotiated between environmental regulators and industry are increasingly popular. However, little is known about whether they are likely to be effective in developing and transition countries, where local and federal environmental regulatory capacity is typically...

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....

We study three corporate nonmarket strategies designed to influence the lobbying behavior of other special interest groups: (1) astroturf, in which the firm covertly subsidizes a group with similiar views to lobby when it normally would not; (2) the bear hug, in which the firm overtly pays a...

The literature on voluntary agreements studies self-regulation, negotiated agreements and public voluntary programs, typically in the shadow of a legislative threat. Prior studies have examined each of these instruments in isolation, but interactions between them have received less attention. We...

Corporate self-regulation is a crucial non-market strategy, and has generally been understood as a response to regulatory threats. However, self-regulation can also influence the nature of regulatory threats, especially when firms have private information about their costs of abatement. We study...

type="main" <p>We study markets in which consumers prefer green products but cannot determine the environmental quality of any given firm's product on their own. A nongovernmental organization (NGO) can establish a voluntary standard and label products that comply with it. Alternatively, industry...</p>

China’s electricity industry has experienced two major stages of development: from 1949 to 1984, the industry was treated as a subordinate sector whose goal was to support the development of other industrial sectors; since 1985, a series of reforms in its governance mechanisms have been...