Lily Hsueh

Beyond regulations: industry voluntary ban in arsenic use.

Firms play a key role in pollution abatement and control by engaging in beyond-compliance actions without the force of law in voluntary programs. This study examines the effectiveness of a bilateral voluntary agreement, one type of voluntary programs, negotiated between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the pressure-treated wood industry to phase-out the use of chromated copper arsenate (CCA), a poisonous arsenic compound. Arsenic is ranked number one on the EPAs priority list of hazardous substances. Unlike a majority of earlier studies on voluntary programs, dynamic panel estimation and structural break analysis show that while a technological innovation in semiconductors is associated with arsenic use increases, the CCA voluntary agreement is associated with a reduction in arsenic use to levels not seen since the 1920s. A voluntary ban in arsenic acid by pesticide manufacturers in the agriculture sector has also contributed to arsenic reductions. Furthermore, the results suggest that environmental activism has played a role in curbing arsenic use. Increasing stakeholder pressures, as measured by membership in the Sierra Club, improves voluntary agreement effectiveness.

Transnational Climate Governance and the Global 500: Examining Private Actor Participation by Firm-Level Factors and Dynamics

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the Global 500, which are the world’s largest companies by revenue, to examine the factors and dynamics internal to companies that motivate some corporations, but not others, to engage in transnational climate governance. Empirical results based on multilevel mixed-effects analyses, which separately identify the relative weight of firm and country-level factors, suggest that the likelihood that a firm participates in transnational climate governance (TCG) is higher when there exists a “policy supporter” who champions sustainability policies and when a company adopts explicit sustainability practices, such as the incorporation of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) principles. Voluntary climate action and carbon disclosure are more likely to take place when a company has a large asset base and certifies with the ISO 14001 environmental management standard. Moreover, the level of civil liberties that corporations enjoy in their respective country of origin is associated with participation in TCG. A decomposition of the variance indicates that firm-level factors account for a majority of the variance in TCG participation. This study has implications for climate change governance and policies, which have increasingly focused on concrete climate solutions and innovations by nonstate and substate actors.

Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the 'Rights to Fish': The Effects of Catch Shares on Fishermen's Days at Sea

This paper investigates whether rights-based management in fisheries ends the “race to fish.�? The staggered introductions of catch shares in the Alaska pollock and Pacific hake fisheries — neighboring regional fisheries that are the largest and sixth largest fishery by volume in the United States, respectively — provide a unique natural experiment for isolating the impact of “catch shares.�? Difference-in-difference-indifferences estimations, combined with vessel fixed effects, indicate that catch shares are associated with an increase in the number of days that a harvester spends at sea engaging in fishing activities, which implies a slowing of fishing effort, ceteris paribus. For the Pacific hake fishery, participation in the pollock fishery is a negative predictor of a harvester’s days at sea in the target fishery. In the initial two years when the hake fishery was rationalized before the pollock fishery the pollock fishery served as a derby alternative for hake harvesters. Results also show that pollock and hake harvesters respond to changing economic conditions: fish or fish product prices are positive predictors of days at sea. For the Pacific hake catcher-processor fleet, an estimated increase in days at sea per ton of catch suggests that a harvester’s fishing intensity has also slowed as a result of catch shares.

Environmental Purchasing in the City of Phoenix

US local governments purchase US

Five Reasons Why Green Technology Firms Should Care About Sustainable Public Purchasing

1.72 trillion of goods and services annually that contribute to global climate change and other environmental problems. Cities that successfully implement environmental purchasing policies can mitigate these environmental concerns while saving money and demonstrating their environmental leadership. However, cities confront numerous challenges when implementing an environmental purchasing policy. This chapter identifies the facilitators and barriers of implementing an environmental purchasing policy. It draws on the experiences within the City of Phoenix as an example and offers eight recommendations for how the City of Phoenix and similar cities can integrate environmental purchasing more fully into their existing purchasing processes.

What Explains Participation and Effort in Voluntary Climate Action by Businesses?: Evidence from the Carbon Disclosure Project

For green technology firms, governments shifting preference for sustainable products and services is likely to become an increasingly important market factor. Green technology firms are thus in an excellent position to respond to greater calls for environmentally friendly products and services and derive market advantages from doing so. Moreover, green technology firms possess the knowledge, expertise, and experience that can increase local governments’ SPP adoption and implementation success. Drawing from the results of two recent studies, this paper presents five reasons why green technology firms should care about local governments’ recent trend toward SPP adoption.

Incentivizing self-regulation: Federal vs. state-level voluntary programs in US climate change policies

This paper analyzes the extensive and intensive margins of participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project by the Global 500. Empirical results based on the Double Hurdle model suggest that the existence of a senior manager with direct responsibility for climate change is associated with higher participation. Firms that have integrated climate change risks into their business operations are associated with higher levels of carbon disclosure. I exploit President Obama’s announcements of executive actions on climate change, which increased the likelihood of climate change regulation in the U.S., using a triple-differences model. Results from difference-in-difference-in-differences models suggest that U.S. firms were more likely to participate and engaged in higher levels of carbon disclosure relative to other firms. Adoption of a climate strategy and emissions targets increased the probability of voluntary carbon disclosure by U.S. companies albeit these firms were overall less likely to disclose their carbon emissions compared to non-U.S. firms.