This article reviews the economic literature on voluntary approaches to environmental regulation. In the last few years there has been a rapid growth in the use of voluntary actions and programs to address environmental concerns. These approaches can be placed into three general categories: (1)...

This paper presents the first empirical analysis of the factors that lead electric utilities to participate in the Department of Energy's voluntary greenhouse gas registry, and the impact of participation on their actual emissions performance. We find that firms are more likely to participate...

Nearly every state in the United States has developed one or more voluntary cleanup programs (VCPs) to support an alternative approach to cleanup of contaminated sites. Thousands of sites have entered into these programs. Yet, despite the ubiquity of VCPs and the number of enrolled properties,...