Explore the vast range of titles available.

We examine the resource provision role of the board of directors in ensuring substantive corporate sustainability practices. Specifically, we examine two channels of resource provision (i.e., the presence of non-executive directors with previous experience in environmental issues—EEDs—and network connections of EEDs) that can affect a firm's ethical and environmental behavior. Using greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data from FTSE 350 firms, as a measure of environmental performance, we show that the presence of EEDs on the board is associated with lower GHG emissions. Further, firms with better-networked EEDs have better environmental performance. A possible mechanism is that firms with EEDs invest more in environmental technology. These results suggest that, in addition to the traditional role of shareholder value maximization, the board of directors also caters to the interests of wider stakeholders of the firm by facilitating substantive ethical practices.

Combining detailed county-to-county migration data with Toxics Release Inventory data, and fine-scale PM2.5 concentration levels, we investigate the relationship between internal migration, income of migrant and non-migrant households and county-level differences in environmental quality. We show that households moving to “cleaner” counties are relatively “richer”—a result consistent with a sorting by income in the spirit of Tiebout (1956). An implication of this finding is that internal migration could contribute to the persistence of disparities in pollution exposure at the county-level.

A key policy argument in favor of emissions markets (relative to command-and-control types of regulation) is their ability to aggregate dispersed information and generate price signals to guide firms' trading and abatement decisions. We investigate this argument in a multi-period model where firms receive noisy private signals about their current period emissions and privately observe their previous period emissions before this information is made public to the rest of the market. Firms respond to information by trading and abating emissions. We show that there exists a rational expectations equilibrium that fully aggregates firms' private information, justifying the policy argument in favor of emissions markets, in the absence of other frictions. We also derive predictions about how prices should be reacting to new private or public information and show that the possibility of abatement dampens the impact of shocks on prices. Finally, we show that the information aggregation result breaks down if firms' abatement costs are also private information. JEL Codes: G14, D83, D84, D85, Q58. Keywords: Information Aggregation, Efficient Market Hypothesis, Price Formation, Emissions Trading.

This paper studies the effect on CO2 emissions of the various agreements that follow the Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Convention and are related to acid rain problems. The analysis is based on a panel dataset of 150 countries over the period 1970-2008 and deals with the problems linked to the analysis of multiple agreements (e.g., time and membership overlap). We show that ratifying an additional treaty has a significant and negative impact on the level of CO2 emissions, even if it is not targeted toward CO2. [web URL: http://le.uwpress.org/content/92/3/534.abstract]

This paper studies the effect on CO2 emissions of the various agreements that follow the Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Convention and are related to acid rain problems. The analysis is based on a panel dataset of 150 countries over the period 1970–2008 and deals with the problems linked to the analysis of multiple agreements (e.g., time and membership overlap). We show that ratifying an additional treaty has a significant and negative impact on the level of CO2 emissions, even if it is not targeted toward CO2.

In a two-country model, I analyze international environmental agreements when a country's emission abatement costs are private information and participation to an agreement is voluntary. I show that the presence of asymmetric information may prevent countries from reaching a first-best agreement if this information asymmetry is too high. I propose a new channel to restore the feasibility of the first-best agreement: pre-play communication. By revealing its abatement cost through a certification agency in a pre-play communication stage, a country commits not to misreport this abatement cost during the negotiations of an agreement. Hence, following certification by at least one country, information asymmetry is reduced. Certification restores the feasibility of the first-best agreement except for intermediate levels of information asymmetry. For those levels, one country undergoing certification is not always sufficient to restore the feasibility of the first-best but it is impossible to find transfers between countries such that they both optimally accept to undergo certification. One country has always an incentive to free-ride on the other country's certification.

A key policy argument in favor of emissions markets (relative to command-and-control types of regulation) is their ability to aggregate dispersed information and generate price signals to guide firms' trading and abatement decisions. We investigate this argument in a multi-period model where firms receive noisy private signals about their current period emissions and privately observe their previous period emissions before this information is made public to the rest of the market. Firms respond to information by trading and abating emissions. We show that there exists a rational expectations equilibrium that fully aggregates firms' private information, justifying the policy argument in favor of emissions markets, in the absence of other frictions. We also derive predictions about how prices should be reacting to new private or public information and show that the possibility of abatement dampens the impact of shocks on prices. Finally, we show that the information aggregation result breaks down if firms' abatement costs are also private information.

A key policy argument in favor of emissions markets (relative to command-and-control types of regulation) is their ability to aggregate dispersed information and generate price signals to guide firms' trading and abatement decisions. We investigate this argument in a multi-period model where firms receive noisy private signals about their current period emissions and privately observe their previous period emissions before this information is made public to the rest of the market. Firms respond to information by trading and abating emissions. We show that there exists a rational expectations equilibrium that fully aggregates firms' private information, justifying the policy argument in favor of emissions markets, in the absence of other frictions. We also derive predictions about how prices should be reacting to new private or public information and show that the possibility of abatement dampens the impact of shocks on prices. Finally, we show that the information aggregation result breaks down if firms' abatement costs are also private information.