| Chapter 1, "Ecolabeling and International Trade", studies the effect of ecolabeling programs on international trade, the environment, and welfare. While my own writing, it is based on ongoing collaboration with Prof. Gene Grossman and will be the basis for a future joint paper. We construct a general equilibrium Ricardian model with a continuum of goods, and imperfect information about the pollution-intensity of goods. We find that with Cobb-Douglas preferences, if the country of origin of products is known, ecolabeling has no effect on trade. This identifies a further gain from trade, since if the average pollution intensities of their products are different in the two countries, the country of origin provides information in much the same way as an environmental label.; Chapter 2, "Should We Ban Trade in Waste?" examines the environmental and welfare effects of a proposed ban on international trade in hazardous wastes between developed and less developed countries. It constructs a general equilibrium model of a small open economy where waste recycling recovers raw materials used as inputs in other sectors. There are two endogenous illegal activities in the model, waste smuggling and illegal disposal. Two plausible descriptions for the technology of the waste disposal sector are found to have very different implications for the effect of a ban. For some countries, relaxing a ban may actually reduce waste imports, pollution, and illegal disposal, and increase recycling, and welfare.; Chapter 3, "Household Waste Policy with Endogenous Product Design", studies the integration of product policy and environmental policy, specifically the role of product design taxes in solving environmental problems. Using a general equilibrium model with imperfect competition and endogenous product design, we find that in the absence of a garbage fee, a product design tax is part of the second-best optimal policy. We also find that while in the absence of a product design tax the optimal garbage fee is positive, the introduction of such a tax may reverse its sign. |
