Three essays in environmental markets [electronic resource] : dynamic behavior, market interactions, policy implications /

by Xiarchos, Irene Margaret.

Three Essays in Environmental Markets: Dynamic Behavior, Market Interactions, Policy Implications Irene Margaret Xiarchos In order to induce or support voluntary environmental behavior, the mechanisms of existing and possible environmental markets must be understood. This dissertation analyzes two issues related to voluntary environmental behavior: (i) The reactions of firms over the long term to stakeholder concerns about the environment (essay one). (ii) Interactions between recycled and primary markets for metals (essays two and three). Although these essays consider different phenomena, they are underlain by common factors: the exploration of behavior in environmental markets, the importance of profit as a motivation for firms’ actions, the centrality of the role of information, and the necessity to look at systems in a dynamic framework. Essay one, entitled “An Environmentally Conscious Firm: Dynamic Behavior and Policy Considerations”, analyzes the environmental practices of a firm conscious that its environmental behavior influences its reputations and thus its profits. Additionally, it considers the role of and the opportunities for voluntary programs and public disclosure policies under this formulation. The analysis is undertaken using dynamic optimization. The title of essay two is “Price and Volatility Transmission between Primary and Scrap Metal Markets”. This essay empirically evaluates the dynamic interactions of primary and scrap metal prices through multivariate time series methods and expands the investigation at the level of volatility transmission. In the related essay three, “Time-Varying Ratios of Primary and Scrap Metal Prices: The Importance of Inventories”, potential short term instability between primary and scrap prices is explored through an examination of primary to scrap price ratios. A model that relates the ratio of primary and scrap prices to levels of primary metal stocks is proposed and evaluated.