Public Voluntary Programs Reconsidered

Thomas Lyon () and John Maxwell

No 2007-07, Working Papers from Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy

Abstract: “Public voluntary programs” (PVPs) involve government offers of positive publicity and technical assistance to firms that reach certain environmental goals. A growing body of empirical evidence suggests these programs often have little impact on the behavior of their participants. A natural policy conclusion would be to eliminate these programs, but this paper offers several reasons not to jump to such a conclusion. We first present a political-economic framework in which PVPs are viewed as modest subsidies used when political opposition makes stronger environmental regulation infeasible. We then explore the design of PVPs in detail, showing how PVPs can potentially enhance the diffusion of cost-effective techniques for pollution abatement, so long as the information involved is not competitively sensitive. Identifying the effects of PVPs econometrically is difficult because information is likely to diffuse to non-participants. Thus, after the early phases of even a successful PVP, it may well be impossible to detect a difference in performance between participants and non-participants.

Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-pbe and nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/RePEc/iuk/wpaper/bepp2007-07-lyon-maxwell.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iuk:wpaper:2007-07

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rick Harbaugh ().