On the efficiency of environmental instruments in a spatial economy

This paper develops an efficiency criterion to evaluate environmental policy instruments in a spatial economy. We call an environmental policy regime at the regional level efficient if it guarantees not only an efficient distribution of emission permits within a region, but also an efficient locational pattern of mobile firms across the regions of a federation. Using marketable pollution rights or emission taxes, efficiency in this broad sense can only be achieved if revenues of regional environmental agencies are not transferred to regional firms. Direct controls neither support an efficient allocation of emission rights within a region nor locational efficiency of firms.     

民营高科技企业的成长模式与环境优化

民营高科技企业的发展依赖于内部成长模式的正确选择和外部环境的优化。民营高科技企业必须结合自身特点和市场前景选择切合企业实际的成长模式或模式组合,政府部门应在市场准入、企业融资、税费负担、权益保护等领域进行政策调整和制度创新,共同推动民营高科技企业的健康成长。     

Is emission intensity or output U‐shaped in the strictness of environmental policy?

We show that, in a range of market conditions, an ever stricter environmental policy does not always lead to ever cleaner production methods and ever lower production of polluting goods. We consider an integrated technology, where firms can reduce their emission intensities in a continuous fashion. Analogous to the previous literature we find that firms' emission intensities can be U‐shaped in the strictness of policy, but we show that this applies only under low profitability conditions. Under high profitability conditions, output levels are U‐shaped in the strictness of the policy. The latter result is new in the literature. In the case where the U‐shape arises in emission intensities, the minimum is reached where the marginal abatement cost curves intersect.     

The Effects of Emission Permits on Growth and the Environment

We develop an overlapping generations model of growth and the environment in which industrial firms produce environmentally harmful emissions. A government controls the emissions by assigning emission quotas to firms, and permits could be issued and freely traded as financial instruments across firms on the basis of the quotas. We show that an environmental policy that decreases an aggregate number of emission quotas could degenerate economic growth and lower environmental quality in the long run. We also show the implications of this result for environmental policy.     

Trade policy mix: IPR protection and R&D subsidies

Abstract .  This paper analyses strategic R&D policy under circumstances where intellectual property rights protection resulting from firms' R&D investment is not perfect. By examining policy choices wherein a government chooses both R&D subsidies and IPR protection levels simultaneously, we show that it is optimal for a government to adopt sufficiently weak IPR protection and to subsidize R&D investments of domestic firms. Inducing R&D investment of foreign rival firms will increase the profits of domestic firms.     

The design of voluntary agreements in oligopolistic markets

This paper analyses the conditions under which a group of firms have the incentive to sign a voluntary agreement (VA) to control polluting emissions even in the presence of free-riding by other firms in the industry. We consider a policy framework in which firms in a given industry decide whether or not to sign a VA proposed by an environmental regulator. We identify the features that a VA should possess in order to provide firms with an incentive to participate in the VA and to enhance its economic and environmental effectiveness. Under very general conditions on the shape of the demand schedule, we obtain the following results. First, a VA does not belong to the equilibrium of the coalition game when benefits from voluntary emission abatement are a pure public good, unless an industry emission target is set by the regulator. Second, in the presence of partial spillovers—i.e. when signatories obtain more benefits from the VA than non-signatories—a VA can belong to the equilibrium only if a minimum participation rule is guaranteed. Third, a VA with a minimum participation rule and a minimum mandatory emission abatement may improve welfare (and even industry profits) compared to a VA in which firms are free to set their own profit maximizing abatement level.     

IMPLICATIONS OF ALTERNATIVE EMISSION TRADING PLANS: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

Abstract.  Two approaches to emissions trading are cap-and-trade, with an aggregate cap on emissions distributed as emission allowances, and baseline-and-credit, with firms earning emission reduction credits for emissions below baselines. Theory suggests the long-run equilibria of the plans will differ with baselines proportional to output. To test this prediction we develop a computerized environment in which subjects representing firms can adjust their emission rates and capacity levels and trade emission rights in a sealed-bid auction. Demand for output is simulated. We report on six laboratory sessions with variable emissions rates, but fixed capacity: three each with the cap-and-trade and baseline-and-credit mechanisms.     

Environmental protection without loss of international competitiveness

We develop a two‐country Cournot oligopoly model with product differentiation across countries and production‐generated pollution. The abatement of pollution by the firms in response to emission taxes is endogenous, and the number of firms can be fixed or there may be free entry and exit of firms in both countries. We propose particular unilateral and multilateral piecemeal policy reforms of emission taxes and production subsidies such that domestic industries will not suffer any loss of international competitiveness (defined in terms of either market share or profits), emission levels will be lower, and welfare could be higher in both countries.     

Intertemporal Emission Permits Trading Under Uncertainty and Irreversibility

This paper analyzes the effect of emission permit banking on clean technology investment and abatement under conditions where the stringency of the future cap is uncertain. We examine the problem of heterogeneous firms minimizing the cost of intertemporal emission control in the presence of stochastic future pollution standards and emission permits that are tradable across firms and through time. A firm can invest in clean capital (an improved pollution abatement technology) to reduce its abatement cost. We consider two possibilities: that investment is reversible or irreversible. Uncertainty is captured within a two period model: only the current period cap is known. We show that if banking is positive and marginal abatement costs are sufficiently convex, there will be more abatement and investment in clean technology under uncertainty than there would be under certainty and no banking. These results are at odds with the common belief that uncertainty on future environmental policy is a barrier to investment in clean capital. Moreover, under uncertainty and irreversibility, we find that there are cases where banking enables firms to invest more in clean capital.     

Optimal combination of innovation and environmental policies under technology licensing

Under what conditions will a carbon tax encourage environmental innovation? Can a regulator design an optimal environmental policy to reduce emissions and to promote clean technologies? This paper studies optimal environmental policy in the situation where a monopoly innovator develops and licenses clean production technologies to downstream polluting firms. We find that (i) a higher emission tax will encourage innovation when the burden of the tax payment in the polluters' costs and/or the price-elasticity of the demand for polluting goods are small, (ii) the innovation-inducing effects of emission tax are inversely related to the emission-reduction (Pigouvian) effects of the tax, and (iii) the social optimum can be achieved by the mix of tax and subsidy. We also show that if the policy instrument is limited to the tax, the second-best tax rate would lie between the marginal damage and the first-best rate. By performing numerical simulations, we also demonstrate that the optimal mix of the emission tax and R&D subsidy can have “double dividend” benefits.     

Environmental taxation and mergers in oligopoly markets with product differentiation

We analyze the effect of mergers on optimal environmental taxation in a Cournot oligopoly market with product differentiation. Our result indicates that the adjustment in emission tax crucially depends on the post-merger output distortion and pollution intensities. Specifically, we find that the optimal emission tax increases post-merger as long as pollution intensity of firms is higher and output distortion smaller post-merger than pre-merger. Furthermore, our result suggests that there is no need to revise environmental policy in markets where pollution intensity of firms does not change post-merger and (i) products are completely differentiated, or (ii) there are many firms for any degree of product differentiation.     

Information acquisition, dissemination, and transparency of monetary policy

Abstract.  This paper examines the role of transparency in a benevolent monetary authority's policies. Each firm's payoff depends on unobservable macroeconomic conditions and firms may incur a cost to acquire private information about macroeconomic conditions. The policy authority attempts to infer the underlying macroeconomic conditions from a noisy measure of aggregate actions and makes a public announcement to inform firms of this inference. High-quality announcements provide firms the incentive not to gather private information and base actions solely on information contained in policy announcements. However, this makes the observed actions of firms less informative to the policy authority.     

Are clean technology and environmental quality conflicting policy goals?

We analyze the effects of an environmental policy on the diffusion of a clean technology. Compared to previous articles we consider that the polluting firms are competitors on the output market and we analyze the effects of the policy on the share of adopting firms in the economy. We show that this share is not monotonic with the stringency of the environmental policy. We also compare the effects of an emission tax and tradable pollution permits and we show that, depending again on the stringency of the policy, either the tax or the permits yields a higher degree of technology adoption.     

Dividend policy: Shareholder rights and creditor rights under the impact of the global financial crisis

The extant literature shows that shareholder and creditor rights positively affect corporate payout policy in a static macroeconomic environment. This study examines how the effects of shareholder and creditor rights on dividend policy change under the impact of the global financial crisis. We posit that this exogenous shock increases agency costs of both shareholders and creditors. With a sample of 133,631 firm-year observations from 23,890 firms incorporated in 41 countries, we find that both shareholder and creditor rights are less effective in dividend decisions in the post-crisis period and the extent of shareholder (creditor) expropriation in the post-crisis period is larger when creditors (shareholders) are adequately protected.     

财税支持、高新资质认定与家族企业自主创新研究

中国家族企业研发投入不足、创新意愿不强。基于2008-2017年中国A股家族高新技术上市公司研究样本，从财税支持视角，分析高新资质认定政策对家族企业自主创新的影响。结果发现，家族企业通过高新资质认定后自主创新绩效显著提升，且高新资质认定后配套财税支持强化了这种激励效应。进一步发现，财税支持政策效果对高新资质认定初审阶段，以及融资约束强、无政治关联、高新开发区外、知识产权保护低的家族企业更加显著。最后，为完善高新资质认定及财税支持政策提出政策建议。     

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.     

Efficient Climate Policy with Internationally Mobile Firms

A major concern in the design of an incomplete climate agreement is thatfirms that use fossil fuels intensively may respond to emission regulationsby relocating their plants from cooperating to non-cooperating countries.This paper analyses how the cooperating countries might deal with the issueof firm delocation through emission taxes, trade provisions and alocalisation subsidy to mobile firms. It is shown that firms should not beinduced to stay in the cooperating countries by lowering emission taxesbelow the Pigouvian tax rate. Incentives to stay should be given partlythrough trade provisions and partly through a localisation subsidy. A secondbest solution without localisation subsidies is also discussed. In thatcase, the efficient emission tax is lower than the Pigouvian tax rate.Finally, the paper discusses the implications of the first best and thesecond best policy regimes for the pattern of firm localisation.     

Business incentives for sustainability: a property rights approach

Public and private demands for sustainable development put pressure on firms to develop strategies that include environmental concerns. Environmental effects from products often appear as externalities, outside the legal boundary of the producing company. These companies often possess the best competence to optimise the total life cycle environmental performance of its products. They are, however, neither obliged nor stimulated enough by policy incentives to do so from a sustainable development perspective. The policy instruments used today are mostly of a control-and-demand type, i.e. they do not create sufficient incentives to go further than hedging over set requirements. Environmental concerns and tightened environmental policy parameters have mostly been associated with the notion of additional costs and thus a restriction on economic performance. However, since the mid 1990s, several papers have called for corporate win–win situations as well as instruments giving up-stream incentives for change, but not enough abatement of environmental impacts has emerged in reality. Perhaps this is due to the lack of proper connection between economic theory on the one hand, and incentive advocating articles and instruments on the other. We propose a concept for trading of product life cycle (PLC) emission rights, based on property rights and transaction cost theories considering the problem with asymmetric information over the value chain. The initial financial impacts from such PLC instruments are shown to be significant for the system provider, since emissions—and resource use—become production costs. This provides economic incentives to take an increased responsibility for information flow as well as initiatives for product innovations.     

Tax Uniformity: A Commitment Device for Restraining Opportunistic Behavior

We show that uniform and differentiated tax systems diverge in their propensity to generate distortionary opportunistic behavior. First, when firms choose investment before the government can commit to its taxes, the tax scheme creates strategic incentives for firms to distort their investment. Second, a system of differentiated taxes has a greater propensity to foster strategic distortions in investment than a uniform tax regime. While the paper makes these points in a set‐up in which polluting firms face an emission tax and invest in abatement, the main message is shown to hold for a wide class of tax policy games.     

Reasons for the low valuation of Russian shares

This note analyses the valuation of Russian assets focusing on the market capitalization of major Russian firms trading in Moscow. It documents that valuations are very low compared to similar assets in mature economies. Several reasons are advanced to explain this phenomenon. The most important of these seems to be the poor record of Russian firms with respect to honouring shareholder rights. Some policy proposals are made to address this problem.