We present a joint theoretical-empirical investigation to assess the adoption by manufacturing firms of innovations aimed at increasing recycling and, consequently, reducing the use of material and waste in production processes. According to the recent emphasis on the 'external' factors...

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical model in order to analyse environmental policy under uncertainty regarding the possibility of a natural disaster. We adopt a two-periods analytical model, to investigate two different institutional settings, one featuring a myopic social planner,...

The paper investigates the effectiveness and efficiency of energy-environmental policy interactions in Italy, adopting a broad optimality perspective that includes policy feasibility and dynamic efficiency. The analysis highlights that though some complementarity among different policies exists,...

This paper investigates if and how illegal disposal of waste is affected by the decentralized waste management commitment of local governments and by enforcement policies. On the basis of a panel dataset at the Italian provincial level that originally integrates waste, economic, policy and...

Although waste minimization is considered a priority to face the waste problem, EU targets on waste prevention are very recent and most policy interventions have been oriented towards increasing recycling rates. As a result, signi?cant improvements in recycling performance have been attained,...

Public purchasing authorities are in a leading position for the introduction, promotion and development of green procurement. Indeed, the public sector can influence green procurement both by designing suitable policies and by driving “green” markets through the significant share of public...

Concerns about the environmental effects of procurement decisions are gaining momentum. We investigate how the environmental quality of public purchases changes under two possible institutional settings: a centralized one, where a single regulator is in charge of both production efficiency and...

We use a multi-task principal-agent model with moral hazard to study environmental regulation of a private agent by an EPA that can also allocate its budget to an alternative project with environmental benefits. In a first possible optimum, the EPA imposes a flat fine that exhausts the agent's...

This paper verifies the robustness of Dixit's claim that common agency problems in the public sector can be solved by restrictions on the incentive schemes that government agencies can develop for the subordinates of other departments. In our model, the outside principal (for instance, an...

We model an environmental policy problem with two representative firms in two countries (one for each country). Firms are subject to environmental taxation, aimed at reducing CO2 emissions, and a unilateral technological spillover takes place: one of the two countries (innovating country) is...