Nonpoint Source Pollution Taxes and Excessive Tax Burden

If a regulator is unable to measure firms’ individual emissions, an ambient tax can be used to achieve the socially desired level of pollution. With this tax, each firm pays a unit tax on aggregate emissions. In order for the tax to be effective, firms must recognize that their decisions affect aggregate emissions. When firms behave strategically with respect to the tax-setting regulator, under plausible circumstances their tax burden is lower under an ambient tax, relative to the tax which charges firms on the basis of individual emissions. Firms may prefer the case where the regulator is unable to observe individual firm emissions, even if this asymmetric information causes the regulator to tax each firm on the basis of aggregate emissions.     

The environmental Kuznets curve after 25 years

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) has been the dominant approach among economists to modeling aggregate pollution emissions and ambient concentrations over the last quarter century. Despite this, the EKC was criticized almost from the start and decomposition approaches have been more popular in other disciplines working on global climate change. More recently, convergence approaches to modeling emissions have become popular. This paper reviews the history of the EKC and alternative approaches. Applying an approach that synthesizes the EKC and convergence approaches, I show that convergence is important for explaining both pollution emissions and concentrations. On the other hand, economic growth has a strong positive effect on carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but weaker effects on non-industrial GHG emissions and concentrations of particulates. Negative time effects are important for sulfur and industrial and non-industrial GHG emissions. Even for particulate concentrations, economic growth only reduces pollution at very high income levels. Future research should focus on developing and testing alternative theoretical models and investigating the non-growth drivers of pollution reduction.     

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.     

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.     

不同类型环境规制下中国工业绿色转型问题研究

资源环境约束下,通过环境规制设计来激励绿色技术创新及推动工业绿色转型具有重要意义。但现有研究忽视了不同类型环境规制及不同地区不同类型环境规制的差异性,因而难以提出有针对性和差异化的规制政策,进而难以有效促进工业绿色转型。文章在区分不同类型及不同地区不同类型环境规制的基础上,运用动态面板模型检验了环境规制对工业绿色转型的非线性影响效应。研究结果表明：不同类型环境规制对工业绿色转型的影响存在异质性,命令控制型环境规制的非线性影响效应并不存在,但经济激励型环境规制与自愿意识型环境规制的增强,可明显提高绿色技术创新水平及促进工业绿色转型。东部地区命令控制型环境规制并未对绿色技术创新及工业绿色转型形成有效激励,但经济激励型环境规制与自愿意识型环境规制的正向促进效应明显。中西部地区命令控制型环境规制有着负向影响效应,经济激励型环境规制和自愿意识型环境规制对绿色技术创新和工业绿色转型的激励效应不明显。文章对于不同类型环境规制的衡量有利于未来进一步扩展和细分环境规制的类型,以深入探讨不同类型环境规制的协同效应;研究结论对科学设定环境规制强度和合理选择环境规制形式以激励绿色技术创新及推动工业绿色转型具有启示意义。     

Who should bear the administrative costs of an emissions tax?

All environmental policies involve costs of implementation and management that are distinct from pollution sources’ abatement costs. In practice, regulators and sources usually share these administrative costs. We examine theoretically an optimal policy consisting of an emissions tax and the distribution of administrative costs between the government and regulated sources of pollution. Our focus is on the optimal distribution of administrative costs between polluters and the government and the optimal level of the emissions tax in relation to marginal pollution damage. We demonstrate how the policy variables affect aggregate equilibrium administrative costs and show that these effects are generally indeterminate, as is the effect of the distribution of administrative costs on aggregate emissions. Consequently, the optimal sharing of administrative costs and whether the optimal emissions tax is higher or lower than marginal damage depend on specific contexts.     

陕西省工业行业碳排放实证研究

运用投入产出模型,首先测算了2002年、2007年及2012年陕西省工业品隐含碳排放量情况。结果发现,3个年份陕西省隐含碳排放量不断增加且呈现出较高的行业集中度,排名前5位的部门由高到低分别为石油化工业、煤石油开采业、金属制品业、非金属制品业及计算机设备制造业。随后,分析了2002年、2007年及2012年陕西省工业品隐含碳排放失衡度。结果表明,在国际贸易方面,上述3个年份陕西省均为隐含碳排放净出口方,说明陕西省为其它国家承担了能源环境负荷;在国内贸易方面,陕西省2002年和2007年为隐含碳排放的净调入方,而2012年变为净调出方,这主要是因为陕西省调出产品增幅较大造成的;在总贸易方面,陕西省隐含碳流动方向与国内贸易相同,这是由于陕西内贸规模远远大于其外贸规模。目前来看,较大的隐含碳流出虽然有利于陕西省经济增长,但所付出的环境代价却不容忽视。因此,陕西省需提高生产技术水平、实现产业结构优化升级与贸易结构低碳化协调发展。     

CO2 emissions, research and technology transfer in China

Although the economy of China has grown very strongly over the last few decades, this spectacular performance has come at the expense of rapid environmental deterioration. Amidst animated debate on the issue of global warming, this study attempts to explore the determinants of CO₂ emissions in China using aggregate data for more than half a century. Adopting an analytical framework that combines the environmental literature with modern endogenous growth theories, the results indicate that CO₂ emissions in China are negatively related to research intensity, technology transfer and the absorptive capacity of the economy to assimilate foreign technology. Our findings also indicate that more energy use, higher income and greater trade openness tend to cause more CO₂ emissions.     

环境规制对长江经济带工业绿色生产率的门槛效应

以碳排放和污染物排放作为非期望产出,采用全局超效率SBM模型测算1997-2015年长江经济带沿线11省市工业绿色全要素生产率,采用面板门槛模型分析环境规制强度对工业绿色生产率的门槛效应。实证结果表明：1997-2015年虽然长江经济带沿线省市工业绿色生产率均呈提升态势,但仅有2014-2015年的上海、2015年的江苏是有效率省份,且省市之间效率差距不断拉大;环境规制对长江经济带绿色生产率存在双重门槛效应,在低、中、高3种环境规制强度地区中,只有中等环境规制强度地区能够通过环境规制显著提升工业绿色生产率。基于此,提出应促进经济增长方式由粗放型转为集约型、提高云贵川湘四省环境规制强度、推动现有环境规制内容市场化转型等政策性建议,以不断提高长江经济带工业绿色生产率。     

Do Lax Environmental Regulations Attract Foreign Investment?

There has been considerable controversy over the empirical significance of the theoretically predicted pollution haven hypothesis. Generally, empirical papers have failed to find an effect on industrial location of weaker or stricter environmental regulations. In this paper we find confirmation of theoretical predictions. We present a statistical test of the impact of environmental regulations on the capital movement of polluting industries. The empirical study is conducted by examining foreign direct investment (FDI) of several US industries, representing industries with high pollution control costs (chemicals and primary metals) as well as industries with more modest pollution control costs (electrical and non-electrical machinery, transportation equipment, and food products). At issue is the effect of the laxity of environmental regulation on FDI. As laxity is not directly observed, we posit two equations, one for FDI determination and one for pollutant emissions, a variable positively correlated with the unobserved variable. We use aggregate national sulfur emissions as the pollutant. Using instruments for the unobserved variable, the statistical results show that the laxity of environmental regulations in a host country is a significant determinant of FDI from the US for heavily polluting industries and is insignificant for less polluting industries.