Strategic manipulation of a pollution permit market and international trade

We consider a framework where firms which compete in an international product market are not all submitted to a pollution permit market. Using the Brander and Spencer’s framework (J Int Econ 18:83–100, 1985), we seek to determine the optimal strategies of both a dominant firm in the pollution permit market and the regulator in a such context. We first show that the dominant firm pursues a strategic manipulation to increase its profit. We also find that the regulator uses a sophisticated strategic policy to increase the domestic welfare by using two instruments: the initial allocation of pollution permits and the pollution cap.     

Detrimental externalities, pollution rights, and the “Coase theorem”

This paper, which builds on Chipman (The economist’s vision. Essays in modern economic perspectives, 131–162, 1998), analyzes a simple model formulated by Hurwicz (Jpn World Econ 7:49–74, 1995) of two agents—a polluter and a pollutee—and two commodities: “money” (standing for an exchangeable private good desired by both agents) and “pollution” (a public commodity desired by the polluter but undesired by the pollutee). There is also a government that issues legal rights to the two agents to emit a certain amount of pollution, which can be bought and sold with money. It is assumed that both agents act as price-takers in the market for pollution rights, so that competitive equilibrium is possible. The “Coase theorem” (so-called by Stigler (The theory of price, 1966) asserts that the equilibrium amount of pollution is independent of the allocation of pollution rights. A sufficient condition for this was (in another context) obtained by Edgeworth (Giorn Econ 2:233–245, 1891), namely that preferences of the two agents be “parallel” in the money commodity, whose marginal utility is constant. Hurwicz (Jpn World Econ 7:49–74, 1995) argued that this parallelism is also necessary. This paper, which provides an exposition of the problem, raises some questions about this result and provides an alternative necessary and sufficient condition.     

Dose response functions and the harvesting effect

Much of the existing literature on air pollution and mortality deals only with the short-term effects of air pollution. Policy on the other hand needs to know when, whether and to what extent pollution-induced increases in mortality counts are reversed. This involves modelling the entire infinite distributed-lag effect of air pollution on mortality counts.Using an ARMAX modelling strategy this paper illustrates how distributed lag effects can be parsimoniously but plausibly estimated in the context of a time-series study into the relationship between ambient levels of air pollution and daily mortality counts for Manchester. The analysis reveals that maximum 1-h ozone levels are strongly associated with daily mortality counts and that a significant harvesting effect is present. The mortality cost of peak 1-h ozone concentrations for Greater Manchester with a population of 2.6 million is estimated to be £572 million annually. This accounts for the fact that some of the deaths associated with maximum 1-h O₃ concentrations have been advanced only by a short period of time.     

Industrial Ownership and Environmental Performance: Evidence from China

This study explores the differences in pollution control performance of industries with different types of ownership – State owned (SOE), collectively or community owned (COE), and privately owned (POE). A theoretic analysis is conducted and followed by an empirical assessment with Chinese data. The empirical results show that the COEs in China have better environmental performances in water pollution discharges than the SOEs and the POEs, suggesting that COEs may internalize environmental externalities.      

Information Disclosure as Environmental Regulation: A Theoretical Analysis

Governments around the world are beginning to embrace a new form of environmental regulation – mandatory disclosure of information. While information disclosure programs appear to have an impact on subsequent firm behavior – often resulting in lower levels of pollution – little is known about the costs and benefits of these programs and whether or not they enhance social welfare. This paper presents a simple bargaining model where mandatory information disclosure is used to overcome a lack of information on the part of the public. We characterize the conditions under which information disclosure will lead to a reduction in emissions, and ultimately, the conditions under which it will enhance social welfare. Several extensions of the model are briefly explored, including the effect of two sources of pollution – only one of which is subject to information disclosure. This paper was prepared while V. Santhakumar was a Visiting Scholar at the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies, Vanderbilt University.     

FDI and environmental regulation: pollution haven or a race to the top?

Increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) flows accompanied with globalization have raised the concern of a “race to the bottom” phenomenon in environmental protection. This is because footloose investors of “dirty” industries tend to relocate to “pollution havens” of the developing world. However when pollutant is transboundary (as in the case of greenhouse gases), the source country’s incentive to relocate and the recipient country’s willingness to host such industries are not straightforward. This article studies the relationship between FDI and environmental regulation using a North–South market share game model in a two-country setting, when pollution is transboundary. Contrary to the pollution haven hypothesis, our model shows that if market sizes of the two countries are small, FDI will raise the emission standard of the host country, resulting in a “race-to-the-top” phenomenon; but if market sizes are large enough, FDI will not change the emission standard of the South (from its laxest form), a finding that is consistent with the “regulatory chill” argument. Equilibrium FDI is contingent on the fixed cost of FDI, as the traditional proximity–concentration tradeoff theory predicts.     

An Empirical Examination of the Pollution Haven Hypothesis for India: Towards a Green Leontief Paradox?

Using input–output analysis, we examine whether India can be regarded as a pollution haven. We calculate the extra CO₂, SO₂ and NO _x emissions induced by 1 billion rupees of additional exports. This is compared with the reduction of Indian pollution caused by an import increase of equal size. In contrast to what the pollution haven hypothesis states for developing countries, we find that India considerably gains from extra trade. Comparing 1996/1997 with 1991/1992, the gains have only increased, indicating that India has moved␣further away from being a pollution haven. The outcome is robust to changes in the underlying assumptions.      

North–South Trade and Pollution Migration: The Debate Revisited

The paper examines the effect of freer North–South trade in goods on pollution, commodity terms-of-trade and national welfare, utilizing a factor endowment framework. North and South are distinguished in terms of the relative endowment of a pollution causing natural resource: South is relatively more resource abundant. Compared to the analysis of Copeland and Taylor (1994)—which is the central work so far on this subject—this paper internalizes the commodity terms-of-trade impact of individual environment policies. It is derived that if countries specialize completely in the free-trade equilibrium, both are induced to reduce their pollution as compared to autarky. It is interesting and paradoxical that the South also reduces its pollution, despite specializing in the pollution-intensive good. Again, contrary to common perception, free trade may entail an overall terms-of-trade loss for the North, while South will always have a positive change in the terms-of-trade. Finally, inspite of better environment, free trade may cause both the countries to gain or lose in terms of aggregate welfare. This research has benefitted from comments received at the conference on International Dimension of Environment Policy organized by the European Science Foundation and Tilburg University, October 7–12, 2000 Kerkrade, The Netherlands and the International Conference on Environment and Development organized by CITD, School of International Studies, JNU, April 7–8, 2005, New Delhi, India, as well as those received from two anonymous referees. A small section of this research was published in Mehra and Das (2002).     

On a clear day you might see an environmental Kuznets curve

We shed some new light on the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and show how it can be viewed as a particular form of equilibrium relationship, where technology and preference parameters determine the shape of the curve. In contrast to most of the literature on the EKC, we estimate a theoretically consistent model on long-run data (Swedish sulfur emission, covering the period 1900–2002). Furthermore, we test and date structural change. The model suggests four regimes, 1900–1918, 1919–1933, 1934–1967 and 1968–2002, generating four rather different patterns for pollution over time. The policy-conclusions are consonant with Pearce’s general view about the EKC: there is no theoretical presumption that it has an inverted U shape, nor should any country try to “grow out of the environmental problems” without analyzing the benefits and costs of so doing.     

Debreu’s social equilibrium theorem with asymmetric information and a continuum of agents

We provide several different generalizations of Debreu’s social equilibrium theorem by allowing for asymmetric information and a continuum of agents. The results not only extend the ones in Kim and Yannelis (J Econ Theory 77:330–353, 1977), Yannelis and Rustichini (Stud Econ Theory 2:23–48, 1991), but also new theorems are obtained which allow for a convexifying effect on aggregation (non-concavity assumption on the utility functions) and non-convex strategy sets (pure strategies). This is achieved by imposing the assumption of “many more agents than strategies” (Rustichini and Yannelis in Stud Econ Theory 1:249–265, 1991; Tourky and Yannelis in J Econ Theory 101:189–221, 2001; Podczeck in Econ Theory 22:699–725, 2003). To the memory of Gerard Debreu. A preliminary draft was presented in Paris, in April of 2005. I have benefited from the discussion, comments and questions of Erik Balder, Jean-Marc Bonnisseu, Bernard Cornet and Filipe Martins Da-Rocha and Conny Podczeck. A careful and knowledgeable referee made several useful comments and rescued me from a mishap.     

Codification,Abstraction, and Firm Differences: A Cognitive Information-based Perspective

Synopsis The resource-based view shares with population ecology, organizational systematics, organizational cladistics, and institutional theory a concern with why firms differ and with what keeps them different. These two questions only have meaning if – as has been the case in the eoclassical theory of the firm – similarities between firms are taken as the default assumption. This paper distinguishes between ontological heterogeneity – differences in the world – and epistemic heterogeneity – differences in the way that the world is construed. Focusing on the latter, it puts forward an argument for taking epistemic heterogeneity between firms as the default assumption. It starts with a general analysis of how living systems make sense of the world. It then goes on to identify the cognitive activities of codification and abstraction as key sources of epistemic heterogeneity. The findings are applied to those systems called firms where a dominant logic allows epistemic heterogeneity to persist. In some case this leads to competitive advantage, in others to a debilitating inertia. The implications for a knowledge-based theory of the firm are briefly explored.     

The Effect of Risk Context on the Value of a Statistical Life: a Bayesian Meta-model

This paper presents the first value of statistical life (VSL) meta-analysis that empirically estimates correction factors for ‘out of context’ benefits transfer (BT) purposes. In the field of mortality risk reductions elicited willingness to pay values in one risk context, say road safety, are frequently applied in other risk contexts like air pollution. However, differences in risk perception and the population at risk across contexts are likely to result in diverging VSL estimates. In a meta-analysis of 26 international stated preference studies, a Bayesian model is estimated regressing contingent values for mortality risk reductions, originating from three different risk contexts, on the characteristics of the risk reduction itself and additional variables characterizing the underlying studies. A willingness to pay (WTP) premium for mortality risk reductions in the air pollution and general mortality risk context relative to improving road safety is observed. Evaluated at the mean, road safety VSL estimates should be multiplied by a factor 1.8 before being applicable in the air pollution context. Moreover, in an illustrative BT exercise we find limited overlap in the set of context specific predictive VSL distributions. Consequently, ‘out of context’ BT results in a substantial over- or underestimation of the VSL.     

Does performance explain mutual fund flows in small markets? The case of Portugal

We study the performance reaction of investors in a specific small market context. Our sample includes all Portuguese open-end equity funds that invested in stocks issued by Portuguese companies in the period December 1993–June 2009. Instead of the convex flow–performance relationship usually documented for the US, we find an absence of reaction to past performance. We find no evidence to support the “smart money effect”, given that capital flows do not favour next period performance winners. We also document persistence of fund flows. Our results are consistent with the idea that large financial intermediaries have the capacity “to drive” their customers to funds with larger fees.     

On locally optimal programs in the Robinson–Solow–Srinivasan model

In the context of a model due to Robinson, Solow and Srinivasan (the RSS model), we report results on the existence and characterization of locally optimal programs, a concept taken from theoretical physics. In particular, we propose a (new) transversality condition under which all locally optimal programs are good. An extended introduction places our theorems in the context of previous work on the existence question, including that on agreeable programs. It appears that there is no completely rational way to attack [the] problem without considering development programmes over an infinite horizon (Gale in Rev Econ Stud 34:1–8, 1967). The analysis of simple models is essential if we are to understand the corresponding situation for more complex models of the economy (Mirrlees and Stern in J Econ Theory 4:268–288, 1972). The technical convenience, for clear and quantitative results, of using an infinite time horizon is rather great (Hammond and Mirrlees in Models of economic growth, Wiley, New York, pp 283–299, 1973).     

Estimating the natural rates in a simple New Keynesian framework

The time-varying natural rate of interest and output and the implied medium-term inflation target for the US economy are estimated over the period 1983–2005. The estimation is conducted within the New Keynesian framework using Bayesian and Kalman-filter estimation techniques. With the model-consistent estimate of the output gap, we get a small weight on the backward-looking component of the New Keynesian Phillips curve—similar to what is obtained in studies which use labor share of income as a driver for inflation (e.g., Galí, Eur Econ Rev 45(7):1237–1270, 2001; Eur Econ Rev 47(4):759–760, 2003). The turning points of the business cycle are nevertheless broadly consistent with those of CBO/NBER. We find considerable variation in the natural rate of interest while the inflation target has been close to 2% over the last decade.     

Weitzman Revisited: Emission Standards Versus Taxes with Uncertain Abatement Costs and Market Power of Polluting Firms

Studies dealing with the optimal choice of pollution control instruments under uncertainty have invariably taken it for granted that regulated firms face perfectly competitive markets. By introducing the product market into the stochastic framework of Weitzman (Rev Econ Stud 41:477–491, 1974), this paper shows for the case of a polluting symmetric Cournot oligopoly that Weitzman’s policy rule for choosing emission standards versus taxes with uncertain abatement costs is biased in the presence of market power. Since the oligopolists take into account their influence on the market price, their total abatement effort, including the restriction of output, is less vulnerable to miscalculations of the tax rate compared to price-taking firms. Consequently, the comparative advantage of instruments is shifted in favour of taxes. In a further step, the provided policy recommendations are generalised by abolishing the assumption that firms are symmetric.     

The role of ethics and product personality in the intention to purchase organic food products: a structural equation modeling approach

The aim of the present study is to examine the role of ethical dimensions and product personality in the purchasing intention of organic food products. The Prospect method (Caprara et al. in Test Psicomet Metodol 7(3–4):113–128, 2000), which integrates the Five factors model of personality (cf. Digman in Annu Rev Psychol 41(1):417–440, 1990) and the Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen in Organ Behav Hum Decis Process, 50(2):179–211, 1991) extended to an ethical dimension, was employed, by using a Structural Equation Modeling approach. Results showed that moral norms—i.e., personal beliefs regarding what is right or wrong (Parker et al. in Br J Soc Psychol, 34(2):127–137, 1995)—can be considered the main motivator of purchasing intention, and they are, in turn, affected by subjective norms and product personality traits of Naturalness and Authenticity. Marketing implications for firms operating in the organic food industry are discussed, in their intent to shift from a “niche” market to a broader diffusion of these products.     

Indeterminacy in price–value correlation measures

During the last 20 years, an important body of literature on the so-called ‘Ricardo’s 93% theory of value’ – the classical hypothesis which asserts that direct prices are very good predictors of both production prices and market prices – has shown that the hypothesized strong correlation in fact holds in the context of cross-sectional data. However, these empirical results are extremely dubious due to severe problems that cause indeterminacy and arbitrariness in the measures of correlation usually employed.      

Adoption of Pollution Prevention Techniques: The Role of Management Systems and Regulatory Pressures

This paper investigates the extent to which firm level technological change that reduces unregulated emissions is driven by regulatory pressures, and firms’ technological and organizational capabilities. Using a treatment effects model with panel data for a sample of S&P 500 firms over the period 1994–1996, we find that organizational change in the form of Total Quality Environmental Management leads firms to adopt pollution prevention practices, after controlling for the effects of various regulatory pressures and firm-specific characteristics. We find that the threat of anticipated regulations and the presence of ‘complementary assets’ is important for creating the incentives and an internal capacity to undertake incremental adoption of pollution prevention techniques.     

Reconsidering the Impact of the Environment on Long-run Growth when Pollution Influences Health and Agents have a Finite-lifetime

Using an overlapping generation model à la Blanchard (1985, J Polit Econ 93:223–247) with human capital accumulation, we demonstrate that the influence of the environment on optimal growth in the long-run may be explained by the detrimental effect of pollution on life expectancy. We also show that, in such a case, greener preferences are growth- and welfare-improving in the long-run even if the ability of the agents to learn is independent of pollution and utility is additively separable. Finally, we establish that a minimum environmental policy is required to obtain a sustainable equilibrium in the market economy and that it is possible to implement a win–win environmental policy.