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Whether governments pay more than firms when contracting has been an important and stubbornly vexing question in public management. One challenge has been finding ways to credibly compare the costs of engaging in market transactions with governments versus firms. In this paper, we systematically compare the costs of contracting when governments and firms buy the same product under the same circumstances. Using data from a randomized experiment of Danish firms, we examine selling firms' transaction cost expenditures when selling the same product to governments and other firms. We find that firms estimate spending about 34 percent more on transaction cost expenditures when selling to governments than when selling the same product to firms. Experience in selling to governments is associated with lower transaction cost expenditures, suggesting that learning can reduce firms' costs of selling to governments and firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) are institutions for inducing firms to produce environmental goods beyond legal requirements. A comparative perspective on VEPs shows how incentives to sponsor and participate in VEPs vary across countries in ways that reveal their potential and limitations. Our brief survey examines conditions under which VEPs emerge, attract participants, and improve participants' environmental performance. We focus on the costs and benefits for actors seeking to supply (or sponsor) these governance mechanisms as well as the costs and benefits for firms who are considering joining VEPs and adhering to their program obligations. (Contains 10 footnotes.)

Spatial, cultural, and linguistic barriers create information asymmetries between buyers and sellers that impede international trade. The International Organization for Standardization's ISO 9000 program is designed to reduce these information asymmetries by providing assurance about the product quality of firms that receive its certification. Based on analyses of a panel of 140 countries from 1994 to 2004, we find that ISO 9000 certification levels are associated with increases in countries' bilateral exports, particularly for developing countries' exports, which may be due to their more severe quality assurance challenges. (Contains 5 tables and 17 footnotes.)

Voluntary environmental programs are codes of progressive environmental conduct that firms pledge to adopt. This paper investigates whether ISO 14001, a voluntary program with a weak sword--a weak monitoring and sanctioning mechanism--can mitigate shirking and improve participants' environmental performance. Sponsored by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), ISO 14001 is the most widely adopted voluntary environmental program in the world. Our analysis of over 3,000 facilities regulated as major sources under the U.S. Clean Air Act suggests that ISO 14001-certified facilities reduce their pollution emissions more than non-certified facilities. This result persists even after controlling for facilities' emission and regulatory compliance histories as well as addressing potential endogeneity issues between facilities' environmental performance and their decisions to join ISO 14001.

When governments buy products and services, the purchase price reflects not just the seller's production costs, but also the costs of making the exchange occur. How much selling businesses spend and for which activities has important implications for the management activities governments need to execute to increase the likelihood of a successful exchange. This article develops a framework for analyzing businesses' transaction cost spending across varying circumstances of selling products to governments. Using unique data from two original surveys of private businesses in Denmark, we provide a rare portrait of how much sellers spend across several categories of contract management activities. Consistent with extant research, we show that these expenditures are lower when selling products with less risky attributes. We also find lower expenditures when businesses have contracted with governments in the past, a finding that suggests that experience can lower the risks of a failed transaction. These results suggest that governments need to calibrate their purchasing activities not only to the circumstances of the exchange, but also to the businesses' own transaction cost spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine states' use of local clean air agencies and provide a preliminary assessment of what causes states to devolve air quality policy authority to the local level. Data from a unique comparative state survey shows that states vary widely in the number of local clean air agencies they employ and the amount of authority these agencies have to set standards, monitor air quality, and enforce regulations. Multivariate analyses suggest that second-order devolution is partly driven by a general propensity to decentralize policy authority, but that policy-specific factors relating to the problem and interest group environment affect devolution as well. These findings indicate that local agencies play an important role in U.S. air quality regulation, and that the dynamics of state devolution to local agencies deserve further study. KEY WORDS: environment, pollution, regional governance, governance, Federalism is a defining feature of U.S. environmental policy. Most major national environmental laws assign an important role for states and localities in implementation and enforcement, and these governments themselves [...]

Voluntary environmental programs are institutions that seek to induce firms to produce positive environmental externalities beyond what government regulations require. Drawing on club theory, this paper outlines a theoretical perspective to study the relationship between program design and program effectiveness. Effective programs have rule structures that mitigate two central collective action problems inherent in producing positive environmental externalities: attracting firms to participate in the program and ensuring that participating firms adhere to program obligations. Because program efficacy can be undermined by collective action problems associated with free riding and shirking, effective voluntary clubs should be designed to mitigate these challenges., Introduction It is now well recognized that voluntary environmental programs are important policy instruments for environmental governance, with programs sprouting up across continents and policy domains. Program by program, scholars [...]

States have developed an array of environmental programs in response to a variety of political and environmental factors. This article examines three state clean air programs--setting ambient standards, ambient monitoring, and enforcement--and shows how each program has a distinct set of empirical determinants, reflecting the programs' diverse purposes. States' ambient standards policies allocate resources among competing claimants, and consequently they reflect the balance of environmental politics in each state. Ambient monitoring programs reflect the degree to which states need and can process information about air pollution problems. The level of states' enforcement programs reflects the scope of the environmental problem in each state., The locus of environmental policy is increasingly situated at the state level. In clean air policy, states conduct the bulk of the enforcement actions, operate an extensive network of air [...]

Markets value superior corporate sustainability performance in part because investors use a firm's environmental performance as a signal of desirable but difficult‐to‐observe attributes, such as the firm's integrity capacity. Yet a signaling conflict can arise when a firm belongs to an organizational form that has a collective reputation for being unethical. In such circumstances, the firm's environmental performance may no longer credibly signal its underlying integrity capacity, leading markets to adjust downward the value they would otherwise place on the firm's environmental performance. Using longitudinal data on South Korean firms, we find that improvements in firm environmental performance lead to smaller increases in market values for firms belonging to a poorly reputed organizational form. However, firms can partially recover lost value by adopting firm features that reduce the signaling conflict, thereby restoring the notion of corporate sustainability performance driving firm market values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Megan Mullin. 2009. Governing the Tap: Special District Governance and the New Local Politics of Water. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 280 pp. Municipal drinking water must be one of the [...]