In 23 countries, the legal framework provided for a revision of prices based on EPR. In Denmark and Ireland, the revisions have also taken place at regular intervals, but they are based on a voluntary agreement between public payers and the pharmaceutical industry rather than on legislation. Countries with legislation to revise or monitor had fixed dates or fixed intervals of 1 month to 5 years. Of the 26 countries that carried out price monitoring and revisions, 18 conducted this exercise regularly, the others on specific occasions. The duration of the intervals ranged from 3 months to even 5 years. In some cases, regular monitoring or revisions of prices are associated with certain medicines: in Norway, the prices of 250 substances, which accounted for about three-quarters of the reimbursement market value, were reviewed annually, and in Spain and Ireland, the prices of non-patented medicines were regularly updated once a year. Five countries (Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany and Hungary) reported that they did not have regular intervals for price revisions. The competent authorities of two countries (Germany and Hungary) have neither controlled nor controlled the prices of medicines. Despite the existence of the relevant legislation in Hungary, the Regulation laying down the arrangements at the time of collection has not yet been implemented. The work examines the use of voluntary approaches in situations where other instruments could have been applied.

It notes that, although the environmental objectives of most voluntary approaches have been achieved, there are few cases where such approaches have contributed to environmental improvements that went beyond what would have happened anyway. The work also shows that the macroeconomic effectiveness of voluntary approaches is generally low, as they rarely include mechanisms to offset marginal costs to be mitigated between all polluters. However, he acknowledges that traditional “command and control policies” rarely offset mitigation costs, and that voluntary approaches can provide greater economic efficiency than such policies by giving companies more flexibility to achieve environmental improvements. Voluntary environmental performance is a tempting term. For a variety of reasons, some companies seem to be doing what they would have done in the past only under the threat of the law. In fact, as mentioned earlier, one of the reasons for voluntary action could be fear of stricter regulation. The actions of companies can perhaps be considered an experiment. After many years of actively rejecting many environmental requirements with limited success, some companies seem to be wondering if there are entrepreneurial opportunities to be green. While some anecdotal evidence suggests that companies have increased their profits through improved environmental performance, other anecdotes suggest that these “win-win” opportunities are limited (Lyon and Maxwell (1999)). Overall, the evidence at this point does not support the idea that polluters will systematically reduce their wastewater without government regulations and programs to promote this behavior. Voluntary Approaches for Environmental Policy: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Use in Policy Mixes provides an in-depth assessment of the use of voluntary approaches, drawing on a series of new case studies and extensive research into the available literature.

The analysis focuses both on voluntary approaches that are used in isolation and as part of the policy mix. This article presents taxonomies and models to help integrate the economics of voluntary environmental agreements (VAs) into the standard framework of environmental economics. There are cases where voluntary approaches are the only policy option available. This is the case, for example, if there is no authority that could adopt and enforce a “mandatory policy” – that is, a “command and control” regulation or an environmental performance tax. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises are a good example. These guidelines are recommendations made by governments to multinationals operating in or from acceding countries. They provide voluntary principles and standards for responsible business conduct in various fields, including employment and industrial relations, human rights, the environment, disclosure, competition, taxation and science and technology. At least in the mid-nineteenth century, courts in Europe and elsewhere recognized that insurance contracts differed significantly from what was traditionally understood as the ideal type of contract (a voluntary agreement with terms negotiated between two parties with equal bargaining power). Due to the custodial role of insurance institutions, insurance can hardly be described as voluntary in many cases.

Insurance companies almost everywhere use standard contracts with terms that are not subject to negotiation. And in all but very few cases, the parties do not have the same bargaining power. As a rule, the insurance company is a much larger economic entity; Competing insurance companies rarely offer significantly different terms (except sometimes the price), and the insurance company has information about the meaning and value of the contract that the insurance applicant does not have. In addition, the “money-for-promise” nature of insurance gives the insurance company enormous power once the insured has a claim; At present, the insured cannot take out a new insurance policy. It is important to have voluntary agreements between countries, institutes and citizens on what a product or process is, what it should look like and what it should do or achieve. To this end, standards are a key element of the united European market. But of course, the idea of standardization can also be applied within a multi-agency group, as standardization facilitates communication between different participants or stakeholders working in a single process or implementing a project (e.B. crime prevention).

Standards thus facilitate cooperation and collaboration and make processes more transparent. To follow a standard, individuals and organizations do so on a purely voluntary basis: “Compliance is not mandatory.” Voluntary approaches to environmental policy, including environmental performance agreements negotiated with industry and public programmes in which companies can voluntarily participate, are becoming increasingly popular in a number of countries. However, the OECD`s work calls into question its environmental effectiveness and economic efficiency. A second form of quantitative restriction is a voluntary agreement between exporters to increase their prices and/or limit their export volumes. These policies are called price undertakings or voluntary export restrictions (VERs), although they have many common economic characteristics; they are currently treated differently in the WTO. While VER would have been banned in the 1995 Safeguard Agreement, price commitments are imposed as a result of the 1995 WTO Agreement on Antidumping.bh national qualifications frameworks have been adopted by many English-speaking countries of the Commonwealth of Nations that have structured their higher education in a neoliberal market, like New Zealand. Scotland, Australia, South Africa, England and Ireland. They can also be considered in Kintzer`s typology, those founded in New Zealand and South Africa being prescriptive and those in Scotland, Ireland and Australia being more favorable to certain sectors (Young, 2005: 12) and almost voluntary. Some argue that a qualifications framework is part of the neoliberal agenda because it commercializes education and “thus contributes to the creation of education markets by providing a common currency of qualification. This common currency, like money in an economy, is seen as promoting greater competition among providers of educational qualifications, as all institutions recognize and reward learning in the same way” (Strathdee, 2003:157).

But even in countries that have heavily commercialized their higher education, such as New Zealand, Australia and, to a lesser extent, England, national qualifications frameworks are promoted to minimize barriers to vertical and horizontal transfer and “maximise access, flexibility and portability between different education and work sectors and different places of learning” (Young, 2003:224). However, there is relatively little evidence that national qualifications frameworks achieve these goals (Young, 2005:1). The correction of externalities, as discussed so far in this chapter, has focused on government intervention in private markets through regulatory approaches such as taxes, permits, and standards. However, if government operates with objectives other than maximizing social welfare (Peltzman (1976)), then there is no guarantee that state intervention will achieve social optimum. Moreover, the second-choice arguments of Lipsey and Lancaster (1956-1957) and the literature on the “double dividend” suggest that government intervention could reduce social assistance, even if the government`s goal is to improve social assistance. It is therefore useful to consider other possible ways of achieving environmental protection. Two options are voluntary environmental compliance programs and recourse to the courts. Voluntary environmental agreements aim to address market failures differently from traditional regulatory and economic instruments. In fact, they are based on exchanges between the PA and companies and on the design of an incentive framework for the parties in the context of negotiation and cooperation. .