We conduct a field experiment involving real purchasing decisions in a large supermarket chain to test the effect of different regulatory interventions aiming to induce a more climateâ€friendly diet on intrinsic motivation. Focusing on shoppers who prefer the dirty variety, we compare...

Are prices or quantities the best regulatory instrument to align private actions with public interests in the presence of externalities? We add another dimension to this ongoing debate by experimentally analyzing the interaction between instrument choice and intrinsic motivation of regulated...

The performance of market based environmental regulation is affected by patents and vice versa. This interaction is studied for a new type of innovation where new technologies reduce emissions of a specific pollutant but at the same time cause a new type of damage. A robust finding is that the...

We often use delegation as a commitment device if a government faces problems of timeinconsistency. McCallum (1995, AER P&P) challenged this practice, claiming that delegation merely relocates the commitment problem but does not solve it. In a model where delegation and specific policies are...

Most real world emission permit schemes are in effect hybrid instruments that feature both quantity and price controls. While the effects of price bounds are well understood for issues such as uncertain abatement costs it has not been investigated how such bounds affect time-consistency of...

We study the optimal R&D trajectory in a setting where new technologiesare never perfect backstops in the sense that there is no perfectlyclean technology that eventually solves the pollution problem once andfor all. New technologies have stings attached, i.e. each emits a specificstock...

We show that for a broad class of technologies the relationship between policy stringency and the rate of technology adoption is inverted U-shaped. This happens when the marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves of conventional and new technologies intersect, which invariably occurs when emissions...