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This thesis attempts to analyze some prominent linkages between trade and the environment. More specifically, the thesis seeks to elucidate the endogenous determination of environmental policies in the context of North-South and North-North relations when pollution generated in one country can cross the border and flow into another country. It also provides a theoretical framework to analyze the political influence of environmental lobbies on environmental policies, environmental damages, and the strategic behavior of domestic firms in making political contributions and investments in environmental R&D. This thesis adopts the political-support approach formalized with the help of the game-theoretic framework of a first-price menu auction formulated by Bernheim and Whinston (1986). In the political process, environmental interest groups that seek to influence environmental and trade policies set by politicians will face other lobby groups. By contrast, domestic firms in imperfectly competitive industries will press for protectionist trade policies and laxer environmental regulations. We find that an equilibrium emission tax depends on the cost and emission per unit of output, the weight that an incumbent government attaches to social welfare, the amount of pollution that countries transfer to each other, and the type of environmentalists. This thesis shows how interactions between different interest groups and their national governments may prevent the adoption of socially optimal levels of environmental policies. Moreover, it shows that environmentalists might be pressing for more stringent environmental policies if they care only about their own local environment and might have common cause with protectionist tendencies if they believe that liberalized trade will result in more pollution. With some exceptions, it is found that the presence of environmental lobbies improves the quality of their local environments. The exceptions arise when environmentalists also care about the global environment and pollution spills over from one country to another. This thesis shows that the presence of environmental lobbies may raise environmental R&D investments in the North, lower the profits of domestic firms, and improve the quality of their home and the world environments by inducing their incumbent government to adopt more stringent environmental policies. The thesis also finds that a more stringent environmental regulation, if properly set, may induce a domestic firm to undertake R&D investments, but it fails to confirm that this will raise the firm's profitability or competitiveness. Indeed, we show that an increase in a pollution tax causes the domestic firm to either cut back its output or raise its R&D expenditure. In either case, the profit of the domestic firm declines.

This dissertation analyzes the use of taxes or fees to regulate the external costs of solid waste. Such costs include the environmental impacts of producing and disposing the materials that become waste, and the monetary costs of collecting and disposing trash. A theoretical model estimates the welfare impacts of imposing externality taxes while varying supply and demand conditions, the size of the external costs, and the error in estimating those costs. The impacts on consumers, producers, government tax revenues, and external costs are shown separately. Two chapters extract empirical information from the literature. First, evidence on the market structure in one relevant industry--plastics--is summarized. Second, studies on price elasticities of demand for final consumers and industry purchasers of materials are reviewed. Next I summarize recent research that estimates the external costs, in dollars per ton, of the materials in solid waste--glass, ferrous metal, aluminum, paper, and plastic. I then combine this information with my own survey data on the prices of consumer products, and the weights of materials contained in those products. Assuming that a tax is set equal to the external costs, this procedure yields the average tax as a percent of price for categories of consumer goods (food, beverages, appliances, etc.). The (tax/price) results are combined with elasticity data to estimate the responses by consumers and industries to imposition of a tax. Such responses include reduced sales of products, less material used per product, conversion from one material to another, and conversion from virgin to recycled materials. Finally, I investigate the impacts of such a tax on households, and ways of mitigating these impacts. The average dollar cost per U.S. household, divided into income quintiles, is estimated. This tax incidence is compared to the incidence of income, sales, and property taxes. I conclude that an externalities tax would significantly affect materials use, principally in those industries where it is a large percentage of costs to consumers and producers. The tax would be regressive, and so equity would require compensating reductions in a tax with similar incidence, such as property taxes.

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This dissertation investigates the conditions that shape the governance structure of contractual agreements and how different contract types address the potential problems that can arise in R&D partnerships under technological uncertainty. The motivation for this study arises from the emergence of new forms of R&D organization to cope with challenges as well as opportunities created by rapid technological change. This dissertation demonstrates the significance of technological uncertainty in determining the observed variety of contractual arrangements in the biotechnology industry. It also shows that the returns from collaborative arrangements as measured by the number of successful patents differ among various contract types. The first part of this research focuses on biotechnology alliances with pharmaceutical companies involving drug discovery research. It demonstrates how advances in technology affect the structure of R&D contracts. Using contractual data over time, it is shown that newer technologies associated with higher uncertainty result in the choice of more equity participation by the pharmaceutical partner and more hierarchical contractual arrangements. This result supports the transaction cost arguments that as contractual difficulties arise, allying firms are more likely to choose a more hierarchical governance form over simpler arrangements. The second part of the dissertation investigates the significance of external R&D investments by large pharmaceutical companies to their overall innovation process. The performance of collaborations on the overall R&D productivity are evaluated in terms of their impact on successful patent production. This study measures the innovative returns to R&D collaborations separate from in-house R&D resources and possible knowledge spillovers. Using a panel data set of large pharmaceutical companies, a knowledge production function is estimated. The results indicate that the implied long-run elasticity of successful patent output with respect to all active R&D alliances is lower than the elasticity estimate with respect to in-house R&D investments. In addition, marginal returns to R&D collaborations differ among various contractual types, in terms of their contribution to patent production process. It is also shown that knowledge spillovers by competitors contribute to patent production, but scientific publications hinder it.