An Experimental Analysis of the Effects of Imperfect Compliance on Technology Adoption

We present the results of an experimental investigation on incentives to adopt cleaner abatement technologies in the presence of imperfect compliance. We consider two emission control instruments—emission taxes and tradable permits—as well as different combinations of the inspection probability and fine for non-compliance, which can result in full or weak enforcement scenarios. We review and qualify existing theoretical predictions in several ways and find the main result is that allowing for weak enforcement causes tax evasion, reductions in permit prices and lower adoption rates of cleaner abatement technologies. As a result, there are increases in aggregate emissions. Finally, treatments with tradable permits under weak enforcement encounter insufficient trading.

The role of nonzero conjectural variation in pollution abatement and output in the design of emission taxes

The presence of nonzero conjectural variations in pollution abatement and output make emission taxes less effective with respect to reducing emissions. This has implications for the characterization of the optimal emission tax, particularly in an international context where there are large asymmetries in pollution intensities. A higher degree of collusion in output between polluting firms results in higher emissions taxes in the non-cooperative equilibrium. In contrast, a higher degree of collusion in abatement between polluting firms results in lower emissions taxes in the non-cooperative equilibrium. These results rely on the presence of nonzero conjectural variations and large asymmetries in pollution intensities across countries. The analysis is relevant to the design of international environmental policy, including cases where countries face increasing global competition and damages from rising global emissions.

Taxes versus standards in a mixed economy

Governments have recently become increasingly concerned about environmental policy choice in a mixed economy because many countries are mixed economies where public and private firms engage in the output market. This paper provides an analytical framework to compare emission taxes and emission standards in a mixed economy. Through theoretical analysis and numerical example, two main conclusions are drawn. First, the ranking of emission taxes and standards in the aspect of bringing about greater social welfare depends on the policy stringency. More specifically, for high levels of environmental stringency, taxes yield a greater social welfare than the standards regulation does, while the opposite conclusion holds for low levels of environmental stringency. Second, the total production level under emission taxes is always larger than under emission standards. Our findings provide important implications for the policy choice and design in a mixed economy.

Strategic environmental policy and international market share rivalry under differentiated Bertrand oligopoly

We analyse strategic environmental policies under international Bertrand oligopoly when firms in different industries, located in different countries, produce differentiated products. Under cooperation, emission prices always exceed the joint marginal damage from pollution. Under non-cooperation, internationally nontradable and tradable emission permit prices are always higher than the domestic marginal damage from emissions (the Pigovian tax); emission taxes can also exceed the Pigovian tax. The non-cooperative emission prices under all instruments can exceed the joint pollution damage. Internationally tradable permits generate outcomes closest to cooperation — they result in the lowest pollution and the highest welfare among all instruments under non-cooperation. Pollution is the highest and welfare the lowest with taxes. Our results provide support for allowing international trade in emission permits even when governments choose their permit levels non-cooperatively.

Emission taxes and feed-in subsidies in the regulation of a polluting monopoly

The paper studies the use of emission taxes and feed-in subsidies for the regulation of a monopoly that can produce the same good with a technology that employs a polluting input and a clean technology. In the first part of the paper, we show that the efficient solution can be implemented combining a tax on emissions and a subsidy on clean output. The tax is lower than the environmental damages, and the subsidy is equal to the difference between the price and the marginal revenue. In the second part of the paper, the second-best tax and subsidy are also calculated solving a two-stage policy game between the regulator and the monopoly with the regulator acting as the leader of the game. We find that the second-best tax rate can be the Pigouvian tax, but only if the marginal costs of the clean technology are constant. Using a linear–quadratic specification of the model, we show that the clean output is larger when a feed-in subsidy is used than when the tax is applied, but the dirty output can be larger or lower depending on the magnitude of marginal costs of the clean technology and marginal damages. The same occurs for the net social welfare, although we find that for low enough marginal costs of the clean technology, the net social welfare is larger when a feed-in subsidy is used to promote clean output regardless the importance of the marginal damages.

Global Emission Taxes and Port Privatization Policies under International Competition

This study considers two asymmetric ports under international competition in which each country has a hub port and a private manufacturer and investigates strategic interactions between port privatization and emission tax policies. We emphasize the key role of the relative market size between the two countries and show that in a privatization choice game, port privatization is a dominant strategy in a larger country, but it will be chosen by a smaller country only if its relative market size is not so small. We also show that the coordination of global emission taxes before privatization choices can induce the equilibrium of the game to be globally optimal when the emission tax is relatively high. This finding provides an important policy implication on the climate change that coordinated global environmental policy is imperatively required in the port privatization policy.