Fiscal instruments are potentially among the most effective, and cost-effective, options for addressing externalities related to poor air quality, urban road congestion, and greenhouse gases. This paper takes a case study, focused on Mauritius (a pioneer in the use of green taxes) to illustrate how existing taxes, especially on fuels and vehicles, could be reformed to better address these exter...

SUMMARY This article summarizes Knechel, Thomas, and Driskill (2020), conceptualizing financial auditing as an economic service. In contrast to the production of tangible goods, a central characteristic services is substantial customer/client participation in process. Financial intensive collaborative network service due multiple parties involved consumption resulting output. introduces signifi...

We conduct an empirical analysis of the technical efficiency of cars sold in Germany in 2010. The analysis is performed using traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) as well as directional distance functions (DDF). The approach of DDF allows incorporating the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions as an environmental goal in the efficiency analysis. A frontier separation approach is used to ...

In the past 10–15 years, innovations in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have fueled a boom in the production of natural gas from geological formations that were previously unprofitable. The rapid deployment of fracking has been accompanied by concerns about negative externalities. In response, a regulatory regime has emerged that requires disclosure of chemical additives, but prese...

A perceived advantage of cap-and-trade programs over more prescriptive environmental regulation is that enhanced compliance flexibility and cost effectiveness can make more stringent emissions reductions politically feasible. However, increased compliance flexibility can also result in an inequitable distribution of pollution. We investigate these issues in the context of Southern California’s ...

Many public goods are supported with both private and public funding. It is often argued that public funding, based on taxes, crowds out private philanthropic contributions. Agents respond to increases in taxes by decreasing their donations. However, the tax level depends on the political equilibrium arising from agents’ voting decisions. In this paper we analyze a variety of motivations for vo...