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An increasingly popular instrument for solving environmental problems is the "public voluntary agreement (VA)", in which government offers modest technical assistance and positive publicity to firms that reach certain environmental goals. Prior papers treat such agreements as a superior, low-cost instrument that can be used to pre-empt a threat of traditional, inefficient, regulation. We present a more general model in which public Vas may instead be weak tools used when political opposition makes environmental taxes infeasible. We explore the conditions under which taxes, public VAs, and unilateral industry actions are to be expected, the implications for industry size, as well as the welfare implications of the various instruments.

Policy-makers claim that regulation by voluntary agreements is morally superior to legislative compulsion. That claim is incorrect. Anything a government is morally entitled to do with voluntary agreement as it is presently procured, it would be morally equally entitled to do without it. (Original abstract--Amended)

There may be many perfectly good reasons, of a purely pragmatic sort, for policy‐making by voluntary agreement between regulators and those whose conduct is to be regulated. Pragmatism aside, however, policy‐makers characteristically claim that that strategy is also morally superior to legislative compulsion. That claim is incorrect. Voluntary agreement, as it is presently procured, does nothing to enhance the moral legitimacy of the policies thereby promulgated. Anything a government is morally entitled to do with voluntary agreement of that sort, it would be morally equally entitled to do without it.

Legal, moral, and pragmatic effects of such agreements between government regulators and those whose conduct is being regulated; Great Britain.

I am grateful to the publisher, Elsevier, for letting the manuscript being archived in this Open Access repository. ; International audience ; In reality, most voluntary agreements with polluters (VAs) are not enforceable in the sense that no legal tools are available to enforce Örmsí commitments. We examine whether such VAs are able to achieve an e¢ cient level of environmental protection when they are obtained under the legislative threat of a pollution quota. We show that they can improve social welfare relative to legislative intervention when lobbying Congress is very e§ective and when the polluter and the regulator do not discount future costs and beneÖts heavily. These Öndings suggest that VAs should be used selectively, taking into account sector characteristics and the degree of ináuence of lobbying on Congress.

I am grateful to the publisher, Elsevier, for letting the manuscript being archived in this Open Access repository. ; International audience ; In reality, most voluntary agreements with polluters (VAs) are not enforceable in the sense that no legal tools are available to enforce Örmsí commitments. We examine whether such VAs are able to achieve an e¢ cient level of environmental protection when they are obtained under the legislative threat of a pollution quota. We show that they can improve social welfare relative to legislative intervention when lobbying Congress is very e§ective and when the polluter and the regulator do not discount future costs and beneÖts heavily. These Öndings suggest that VAs should be used selectively, taking into account sector characteristics and the degree of ináuence of lobbying on Congress.

Voluntary Agreements (VAs) are becoming increasingly prominent in many countries as a policy instrument for achieving improvements in the environmental performance of industry. They aim to encourage industry led initiatives to set and meet environmental goals, to raise the environmental profile in corporate decision making, and to give participating industries the flexibility to achieve these goals in the manner which best meets their particular economic, social and political circumstances. The first section of this paper establishes an analytical framework for assessing the performance of VAs. This includes a classification of the different types of VAs and a discussion of the different criteria which could be used to evaluate their performance. The paper goes on to review the experience of several OECD countries with the implementation of VAs with energy intensive industries aimed at achieving improvements in energy efficiency or reducing the release of greenhouse gases. Three principle case studies are presented on Germany, the Netherlands and the United States with smaller studies on Canada and New Zealand. Each of the case studies sets out to describe the main characteristics of the VA, the different regulatory environments in which they are employed, and to evaluate their effectiveness in achieving environmental goals. Drawing on this information the paper goes on to identify several issues which need to be taken into consideration for the successful implementation of Vas. At present limited information is available to evaluate the success of VAs in different countries, especially in terms of economic efficiency and environmental effectiveness. This is partly because VAs have only been recently introduced in many countries and also because VAs rarely operate in isolation from other policy instruments. A significant part of this study, therefore, has focused on evaluation issues, such as how to compare performance of VAs against a "business as usual" baseline scenario or with historical trends. When such analysis has been used in this paper however, the difficulties and limitations of these methods are noted. VAs do, however, appear to play an important role in changing attitudes and awareness and generating and diffusing information. These so-called "soft effects" are difficult to quantify and often overlooked but appear to be one of the main advantages of a voluntary co-operative approach.

Many voluntary agreements (VA's) fall under the European or Dutch cartel prohibition (Article 81 EC, Article 6 Mededingingswet). This paper starts with an abstract description of the relation between competition and environmental protection. Particular attention is paid to the role in this relation of the "integration" and "polluter pays" principles enshrined in, respectively, Article 6 and 175 EC. After that it describes current European and Dutch competition policy vis a vis VA's. The paper concludes with some recommendations of what competition policy as regards VA's should be. These recommendations are primarily based on legal reasoning.

Voluntary agreements with polluting industries are becoming a popular alternative to traditional environmental regulation. One reason may be that voluntary agreements can reduce compliance costs of polluting industries. In this paper we develop a family of simple policy formulation and implementation models enabling us to formally characterize the policy environments that make voluntary agreements possible. The main message of this paper is one of caution. Voluntary agreements that increase compliance costs and reduce social welfare cannot be ruled out. The analysis also suggests that giving the legislative branch of government an effective power of veto reduces (but does not eliminate) the possibility of welfare reducing voluntary agreements.

There are many ways in which policies can be sanctioned, and legislation is only one of a number of alternatives. This article examines one such alternative: voluntary agreements. After outlining the major characteristics of this policy instrument there is an examination of the various factors which appear to influence their selection in favour of legislation. This is followed by an attempt to trace a pattern of policy succession by examining three particular cases where there has been a change in the principal policy instrument. Finally, the discussion as a whole is set in the context of the executive domination of Parliament. The implications of the use of non‐statutory instruments, such as voluntary agreements, for this relationship are noted.