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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.