When a local government decides to pursue environmentally aware construction policies for its own buildings, the private sector follows suit, according to new research by Timothy Simcoe and Michael W. Toffel.
In a new paper, Public Procurement and the Private Supply of Green Buildings, authors Timothy Simcoe and Michael W. Toffel show that there is, indeed, a spillover effect to the private sector.
Simcoe, an assistant professor at Boston University, adds that such policies might also resolve a type of coordination problem often seen in the diffusion of technology standards, such as the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface or a new video game console.