Skip to content
University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Greening Export Promotion: A Comparative Study of Environmental Standard-Setting for Export Credit Agencies

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    umi-umd-5141.pdf (704.9Kb)
    No. of downloads: 2984

    080115_BEPress_Copyright_letters.pdf (123.6Kb)
    No. of downloads: 646

    Date
    2008-01-15
    Author
    Schaper, Marcus
    Advisor
    Schreurs, Miranda A
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Export credit agencies (ECAs), private banks and the World Bank are all institutions which facilitate the construction of infrastructure projects in developing countries, which often have significant environmental ramifications. However, although all three types of institutions have also been known to acquiesce to public pressure to consider the extent of the environmental impact of their projects, export credit agencies were able to resist this pressure for 25 years, implementing environmental rules in their operations much later than did the World Bank and private banks, which introduced similar reforms within a much shorter period of time. This dissertation explains why ECAs as public institutions were less responsive to public demands than an international organization and even private banks. The answer to this puzzle is advanced in two dimensions: one dealing with the rule-making process and the other addressing the harmonization of policies among ECAs. In a cost-benefit analysis approach covering both dimensions, the political costs and benefits of changes to existing rules as well as the regulatory costs of these changes are considered. Political costs and benefits are considered to result from the effects of these rules on competing groups combined with the power these groups wield in the rule-making process. Regulatory costs result from changes in rules and procedures. They are especially pronounced when adaptations go beyond changes to regulatory targets and include modifications in regulations or even challenge meta-regulatory principles engrained in regulatory cultures. Diverging speed and scope of reform among these institutions is the consequence of variations in the power of competing demands made on them and variations in the institutional contexts enabling, channeling, and constraining the power of the groups making the demands. Adopted rules reflect these power relationships. ECA harmonization involves changes to pre-existing regulations and compromises on meta-regulatory principles. This kind of agreement is very difficult to achieve - if achieved at all. Institutional incompatibility between rules proposed by the United States and continental European regulatory cultures was a decisive obstacle to harmonization.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/8019
    Collections
    • Government & Politics Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility