R&D policy in a vertically related industry

In this paper, we analyze the effectiveness of public policy aimed to stimulate business-performed R&D in a vertically related market. We examine the role of an R&D active upstream supplier in a four-stage R&D model, where we incorporate public funding. The considered policy instrument is direct funding of firms’ R&D efforts. We calculate the optimal policies and show that they have a positive impact on firms’ R&D investments. From a welfare point of view, it is optimal to differentiate the subsidy rates between the upstream and the downstream markets. Competition in the product market leads to a higher subsidy rate to the upstream supplier than to the downstream firms. When concentration is high in the downstream market, the optimal solution is an R&D subsidy for these firms, otherwise the optimal solution is an R&D tax for the downstream firms.     

Green Technology and Optimal Emissions Taxation

Unless an active environmental policy exists, firms have no incentive to engage in abatement or environmental R&D so policy design is of paramount importance. This design heavily depends on the way R&D spillovers operate. There are two distinct types of R&D spillover: output spillover and input spillover. An input spillover operates on the expenditure toward pollution reduction, whereas an output spillover manifests as the achieved abatement. Under optimal emissions taxation, significant differences arise due to this distinction, in particular, when the spillover operates on R&D inputs. In an oligopolistic setting, the result is higher R&D expenditure, but also higher aggregate emissions and, consequently, higher emissions taxes. By contrast, when spillovers occur in R&D output, there is a U‐shaped relationship between the optimal tax and the spillover, showing a trade‐off between the optimal tax rate and spillovers when these are low. In terms of the relative effectiveness of different R&D organization setups, combining emissions taxes with R&D cooperation, this paper shows that under low levels of R&D spillover R&D cooperation gives higher emissions reductions, whereas when spillovers are high this is not the case.     

The Timing of Environmental Policy: A Note on the Role of Product Differentiation

We examine the role that product differentiation can play in the design of environmental policy under full commitment and no commitment on the part of the environmental regulator. We consider a setting with two firms selling a differentiated product which generates pollution through emissions. Firms can reduce their emissions by undertaking abatement activities while an environmental regulator taxes emissions. The main results are: (1) When products are highly differentiated, the optimal time-consistent (no commitment) tax is always lower than the optimal pre-commitment tax. As the degree of product differentiation decreases, for relatively efficient abatement technology and high damages, the time-consistent emission tax exceeds the optimal pre-commitment one. (2) Abatement when product differentiation is extensive is higher under the time-consistent regime unless the abatement technology is extremely efficient. The same ranking applies to social welfare. However, as products become more and more similar, these results are (partially) reversed and pre-commitment could lead to both higher levels of abatement and welfare.     

Optimal pollution control in a mixed oligopoly with research spillovers

We study optimal pollution abatement under a mixed oligopoly when firms engage in emissions‐reducing research and development (R&D) with imperfect appropriation. The regulator uses a tax to curb emissions. Results show that in a mixed oligopoly, the public firm has positive emissions reduction in equilibrium; however, emissions reductions of the private firm could be positive or zero. Under certain conditions, the optimal pollution tax is positive; otherwise, the tax reverts to a subsidy. Comparing mixed and private duopolies, privatisation leads to reductions in R&D and output, but to an increase in overall emissions, so privatisation tends to make the environment worse.     

Global Warming and Endogenous Technological Change: Revisiting the Green Paradox

One of the most pressing policy challenges facing the world today concerns how to mitigate global warming while improving people’s well-being. The green paradox argues that increasing taxes on CO₂ emissions exacerbates global warming in the present because firms have the incentive to bring forward the extraction and sale of fossil fuels. This paper shows that whenever technological progress allows the extraction costs of fossil fuels to be reduced over time and a positive R&D subsidy is paid, a growing tax on CO₂ emissions reveals a welfare maximizing policy.     

Strategic R&D policy under vertically differentiated oligopoly

In this paper strategic R&D policy is analysed, where a high-tech firm and a low-tech firm compete in a third country with vertically differentiated ( high-quality and low-quality ) products. If the product market is under price competition, the high-tech (low-tech) firm's government has an incentive to tax (subsidize) its domestic firm's product R&D activities. If the product market is under quantity competition, the results are opposite: an R&D subsidy (tax) incentive for the high-tech (low-tech) firm's government; and the high-tech firm's government always gains in the R&D policy game, in contrast to the standard prisoner's dilemma result of the R&D policy literature. JEL Classification: F13     

R&D Subsidies versus R&D Cooperation in a Duopoly with Spillovers and Pollution

We introduce pollution, as a by‐product of production, into a non‐tournament model of R&D with spillovers. Technology policy takes the form of either R&D subsidisation or pre‐competitive R&D cooperation. We show that, when the emissions tax is exogenous, the optimal R&D subsidy can be negative, i.e. there should be a tax on R&D, depending on the extent of the appropriability problem and the degree of environmental damage. In a wide class of cases, depending on the parameter values, welfare in the case of R&D cooperation, is lower than welfare in the case of R&D subsidisation.     

R&D subsidy and output subsidy in a duopoly: The role of technology spillover and R&D budget

Technology spillover and research and development (R&D) budget are relevant on government subsidies that aim at improving social welfare through enhancing R&D incentives of firms. However, there has not been related literature considering these two factors. To fill this gap, this paper examines the effect of technology spillover and R&D budget on R&D competition of duopolistic firms and government subsidies by constructing a game-theoretic model. We find that while each firm's profit sometimes increases with R&D budget for low coefficient of technology spillover, this profit may decrease with R&D budget for high coefficient of technology spillover due to the intensified R&D competition. We show that when both R&D budget and the coefficient of technology spillover remain high, R&D subsidy leads to higher social welfare than output subsidy and otherwise R&D subsidy results in lower social welfare.     

Market power and output-based refunding of environmental policy revenues

Output-based refunding of environmental policy revenues combines a tax on emissions with a production subsidy, typically in a revenue-neutral fashion. With imperfect competition, subsidies can alleviate output underprovision. However, when market shares are significant, endogenous refunding reduces abatement incentives and the marginal net tax or subsidy. If market shares differ, marginal abatement costs will not be equalized, and production is shifted among participants. In an asymmetric Cournot duopoly, endogenous refunding leads to higher output, emissions, and overall costs compared with a fixed rebate program targeting the same emissions intensity. These results hold whether emissions rates are determined simultaneously with output or strategically in a two-stage model.     

OPTIMAL POLICY FOR PRODUCT R&D WITH ENDOGENOUS QUALITY ORDERING: ASYMMETRIC DUOPOLY*

We examine the optimal R&D subsidy/tax policy under a vertically differentiated duopoly. In a significant departure from the existing work, we consider the case of asymmetric costs of product R&D where there is a small technology gap between firms. In our analysis, the endogeneity of quality ordering is explicitly taken into account. We demonstrate the possible anti‐leapfrogging effect of R&D subsidy/tax policy. By committing to a firm‐specific subsidy schedule contingent on firms’ quality choices, the government can not only correct distortions in product quality but also select the socially preferred equilibrium. The latter role is fulfilled by preventing the technologically inferior firm from becoming a quality leader in the industry. Both Bertrand and Cournot cases are analysed.     

International R&D Rivalry and Industrial Strategy without Government Commitment

We examine optimal industrial and trade policies in a series of dynamic oligopoly games in which a home and a foreign firm compete in R&D and output. Alternative assumptions about the timing of moves and the ability of agents to commit intertemporally are considered. We show that the home export subsidy, R&D subsidy and welfarc are higher when government commitment is credible than in the dynamically consistent equilibrium without commitment. Commitment thus yields welfare gains (though they are small) but so does unanticipated reneging, whereas reneging which is anticipated by firms yields the lowest welfare of all.     

Environmental Policy with Endogenous Technology from a Game Theoretic Perspective: The Case of the US Pulp and Paper Industry

The merits of different types of regulatory tools in eliminating pollution and at the same time inducing innovation have long been an interest of researchers in both environmental economics and industrial organization. Although there is a substantial theoretical literature investigating the potential for various environmental policies to attain these dual goals, this is a challenging empirical problem because every industry has its own inherent characteristics that play an important role in determining the performance of different regulatory tools. The majority of the work to date focuses on pollution abatement while leaving pollution prevention understudied. In most of the literature firms are also assumed to be symmetric. Asymmetries among firms add another degree and level of complexity to their strategic interactions, and affect the performance of different regulatory tools. This paper investigates the performance of two alternative regulatory tools, an emissions performance standard and an emissions tax, in reducing pollution and inducing pollution prevention and abatement R&D in the US pulp and paper industry. We construct a model representing the industry in an asymmetric Cournot duopoly framework, calibrate the model to disaggregated industry data, and run scenarios to replicate the behavior of the firms in an imperfectly competitive output market. Our results suggest that pollution prevention R&D can respond quite differently than abatement R&D to different policy instruments. The results indicate that R&D spillovers among firms play crucial role in technology development and strategies of the firms. Our results also suggest that strategic interactions between firms in an imperfectly competitive industry can have significant impacts of the levels of both types of R&D.      

Tax Policy When Countries Compete for Third Market Exports

We examine the welfare and other consequences of tax policy in a third market export model where duopolists located in two countries compete in prices. With tax competition between governments, we allow for welfare‐maximizing governments in the two countries to delegate tax setting responsibility to policy‐makers who have different objectives than the governments. The unique equilibrium in the tax competition environment involves both governments delegating tax setting responsibility to tax revenue‐maximizing policy‐makers. This equilibrium yields higher welfare for both countries than the outcome when the governments delegate to welfare‐maximizing policy‐makers. The paper also compares tax competition with tax harmonization and shows that when the entire export market is served, tax harmonization improves the welfare of the country that houses the low cost firm, while the other country may be immiserized.     

International R&D Rivalry with Spillovers and Policy Cooperation in R&D Subsidies and Taxes

Abstract

We have investigated non-cooperative and jointly optimal R&D policies in the framework of Spencer & Brander (1983) in the presence of R&D spillovers. When R&D activities are strategic substitutes and the R&D game exhibits a positive externality, the result of Spencer & Brander (1983) reverses: the non-cooperative policy is a tax while the jointly optimal policy is a subsidy. Moreover, when R&D activities are strategic complements, the usual result of the prisoners' dilemma in the strategic subsidy game does not hold, implying that a welfare intervention is preferable over laissez-faire. When spillovers are sufficiently large, the joint welfare increases with subsidies being higher than those under non-cooperation.     

A Note on Optimal Industrial Policy Towards Bertrand Homogeneous Duopoly

Recent studies in strategic trade and industrial policy analysis suggest that an investment subsidy, in the form of an R&D subsidy, a capacity subsidy or an advertising subsidy, would be a robust industrial policy recommendation towards an international differentiated oligopoly. However, in this paper, we show that this result does not carry over to the case of a Bertrand homogeneous duopoly. This result together with the fact that the optimal industrial policy is to set an investment subsidy when in product market competition firms play a Cournot output game, imply immediately that there hardly exists a robust industrial policy recommendation towards homogeneous goods industries.     

政府产品创新补贴下的企业R＆D策略选择

为了研究在政府产品创新补贴政策下企业的R＆D策略选择问题,建立了双寡头市场中面向工艺R＆D的三阶段博弈模型：第一阶段政府以社会福利最大为目标选择产品创新补贴率;第二阶段企业进行R＆D投资以降低生产成本;第三阶段企业在产品市场中进行古诺竞争。根据双寡头在第二和第三阶段是否合作,给出了研发竞争、研发卡特尔、技术共享联盟和研究共同体等四种R＆D策略,得到了相应的政府最优R＆D补贴率。研究表明：从企业的R＆D投入和产品产量的角度看,当溢出效应较高时,研发竞争策略优于研发卡特尔策略;当溢出效应较低时,研发卡特尔策略优于研发竞争策略。研发卡特尔策略与研发竞争策略相比,研发卡特尔更能推动企业利润的提高并且可以改善社会总福利。从产品产量、企业利润和社会总福利最大化角度考虑,研究共同体为四种策略中的最优策略。     

Effluent taxes,market structure,and the rate and direction of endogenous technological change

This paper studies the effects of effluent taxes on firms’ allocation of resources to cost-reducing and emission-reducing R&D, and on entrepreneurs’ decisions to develop new goods and enter the market. A tax set at an exogenous rate that does not depend on the state of technology reduces growth, the level of consumption of each good, and raises the number of firms. The induced increase in the variety of goods is a benefit not considered in previous analyses. In terms of environmental benefits, the tax induces a positive rate of pollution abatement that offsets the “dirty” side of economic growth. A tax set at an endogenous rate that holds constant the tax burden per unit of output, in contrast, has ambiguous effects on growth, the scale of activity of each firm and the number of firms. Besides being novel, the potential positive growth effect of this type of effluent tax is precisely what makes this instrument effective for welfare-maximizing purposes. The socially optimal policy, in fact, requires the tax burden per unit of output to equal the marginal rate of substitution between the growth rate of consumption and abatement. Moreover, a tax/subsidy on entry is needed, depending on whether the contribution of product variety to pollution dominates consumers’ love of variety.      

Strategic R&D policy under multiproduct duopoly and quality-price competition

This paper analyses strategic R&D policy in a third-country trade model where multiproduct firms with different production technologies compete in a vertically differentiated market. I show that the optimal R&D policies for both countries are subsidies when the product market is under price competition.     

Timing and Commitment of Environmental Policy,Adoption of New Technology,and Repercussions on R&;D

We investigate the interplay between environmental policy, incentives to adoptnew technology, and repercussions on R&D. We study a model where a monopolistic upstream firm engages in R&D and sells advanced abatement technology to polluting downstream firms. We consider four different timing and commitment regimes of environmental tax and permit policies: ex post taxation (or issuing permits), interim commitment to a tax rate (a quota of permits) after observing R&D success but before adoption, and finally two types of ex antecommitment before R&D activity, one with a unique tax rate (quota of permits), the other one with a menu of tax rates (permit quotas). We study the second best tax and permit policies and rank these with respect to welfare. In particular, we find that commitment to a menu of tax rate dominates all other policy regimes.     

Emission Taxes and Product Differentiation in the Presence of Foreign Firms

Industries characterized by differentiated products are important contributors of greenhouse gases and currently subject to market‐based policies such as emission taxes. In the context of developing countries, fears about foreign investment leaving the country are often used as an argument not to address industry emissions through emission taxes. This paper develops a Cournot model with product differentiation in the presence of abatement efforts where host and foreign firms are subject to an emission tax. The analysis indicates that abatement efforts and differences in pollution intensity coefficients across firms may play a significant role in the characterization of optimal policy. The analysis also suggests that the government may opt to encourage foreign, less pollution‐intensive firms via higher taxation. Additionally, this paper examines how an optimal emission tax may be adjusted as products become more differentiated; industry emissions may fall/rise as a result of more differentiated products. One important contribution of this paper is that it emphasizes the role of abatement efforts, product differentiation, and differences in pollution intensity coefficients across firms in the characterization of the optimal emission tax.