In recent years, voluntary approaches to emission reductions have increasingly been adopted by major companies all over the world and have increasingly been supported by regulatory bodies and public administrations. Despite this world-wide effort to achieve a better environmental performance through voluntary approaches, economic analysis has somehow neglected the importance of voluntary approaches as an environmental policy instrument. This book is a first attempt to fill this gap by gathering together all major experts in the fields and by providing a detailed analysis of all main aspects characterising the design and implementation of voluntary approaches in environmental policy. The book, which is the outcome of cooperation between the Ecole des Mines of Paris and the Fondazione ENI E. Mattei, within the EU Concerted Action on Market Based Policy Instruments for Environmental Protection, contains both theoretical analyses and case studies. The chapters of this book therefore provide a useful assessment of the main features and of the potential implementation problems of a new, important and promising environmental policy instrument.

About the Author
Francois Leveque is professor of Law and Economics at the Ecole des mines de Paris. His academic, teaching and consulting interests are in the areas of environmental policy, antitrust and regulation. His research focuses on the assessment of policy instruments (e.g., access charges for railways, transmission tariffs, eco-taxes, co-venants) and policy reforms (e.g., gas and electricity French and European laws, EU deregulation in railways and airlines industries).

Reviews

From the reviews:

"Carlo Carraro and Francois Leveque's book is one of the first wide-ranging and serious endeavors to delineate voluntary approaches, analyze their effectiveness, explore the possibilities to enhance their performance, and explain the rationale for voluntary compliance by different stakeholders. ... strongly recommend this book to graduate students, environmental policy scholars, policy practitioners, and those in the private sector interested in the adoption of voluntary approaches. The book provides researchers and stakeholders with theoretical and methodological tools for exploring the conditions under which voluntary agreements work." (Lada Kochtcheeva Dunbar, International Environmental Agreements, Vol. 8, 2008)

Book Information
ISBN 9780792355168
Author Carlo Carraro
Format Hardback
Page Count 264
Imprint Springer
Publisher Springer