Efficient Environmental Policy with Imperfect Compliance

Discussions of efficient environmental policytend to recommend taxes rather than quotas ongrounds of efficiency; a uniform tax willequalize marginal abatement cost betweenpolluters. When polluters' actions are imperfectly observable, the distinction betweentaxes and quotas becomes less clear. Taxes maybe evaded by underreporting of emissions, whilequota violations will not always be discovered.This paper explores the conditions under whichthe efficiency properties of taxes continue tohold even when evasion is possible, and theextent to which the fine for quota violationsplays the same role as a tax on emissions withsimilar efficiency properties.     

Standard Oriented Environmental Policy: Cost-Effectiveness and Incentives for 'Green Technology'

Abstract. In their seminal 1971 paper, W. J. Baumol and W. E. Oates analyzed effluent charges and 'command and control' regarding their ability to attain a given standard of environmental quality at minimum cost. In the subsequent literature,transferable discharge permits (TDPs) have been added to the portfolio of standard oriented environmental policy instruments. We place these instruments in a dynamic context. Here, cost minimization is defined in an intertemporal setting allowing for induced technical change. It turns out that the relative performance of alternative policy instruments regarding their 'dynamic cost-effectiveness' crucially depends on the information available to the involved agents. Under adverse informational conditions,only a TDP system with future markets is dynamically cost-effective.     

Comparing Environmental Policy Instruments Within an Incomplete Contract Framework

This paper compares three different legal means—no environmental policy (the pollutee pays), full liability (the polluter pays), and pollution standards—to reduce and regulate neighborhood externalities within an incomplete contract framework. It turns out that the relative efficiency of these instruments depends, in general, on details. However, moderate standards are preferable to no environmental policy and tight (but not too tight) standards dominate liability. This provides under the given assumptions (neighborhood externalities, incomplete contracts) a justification for “sensible” standards for three reasons. First, unilateral allocations of property rights are biased that distort allocations even if ex post bargaining takes place. Second, a standard is superior in the following sense: if it is set equal to the outcome under any allocation of rights, it will be improved in the process of ex post bargaining. Third, unilateral property rights encourage strategic ex ante investments up to the point that committing to no bargaining would be beneficial (if possible).     

Generalized Progress of Abatement Technology: Incentives Under Environmental Liability Law

This paper considers the incentives environmental liability creates to improve pollution abatement technology. Our analysis considers technical progress in end-of-pipe abatement and in the production technology used, thereby generalizing the approach taken by Endres et?al. (Environ Resour Econ 36:341?C366, 2007). We establish that this generalization has drastic repercussions on incentives under negligence liability, while the performance of strict liability is not compromised. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the social desirability of investment in abatement or production technology (or both) decisively determines how ex-ante and ex-post regulation fare with respect to welfare maximization in the case of negligence liability.     

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.     

循环经济下企业环境责任的变迁与政策激励分析

随着经济模式的转化企业的环境责任由被动遵守环境法规和标准逐渐向主动承担环境责任转化,没有企业主动承担环境责任就没有循环经济的深入推进,循环经济的深化对企业的环境责任提出更高的要求。企业主动承担环境责任动力源于市场的导向和政府环境政策的激励,通过环境政策的调整均衡企业、个人和社会三者利益,促进企业主动承担环境责任和循环经济良性发展。     

Political Competition, Rent Seeking and the Choice of Environmental Policy Instruments

This paper investigates the impact of political lobbying on the choice of environmental policy instruments. It is argued that the prevalence of pollution emission standards over more efficient policy instruments may result from rent seeking behaviour. The model further predicts that when an emission standard is used to control pollution, rival political parties have an incentive to set the same standard. There is therefore a convergence of policies. Moreover, it is shown that emission taxes are more likely to be supported and proposed by political parties which represent environmental interest groups. This feature appears to accord with the observed support for environmental taxes by Green parties in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.     

Household Adoption of Water-Efficient Equipment: The Role of Socio-Economic Factors,Environmental Attitudes and Policy

Using survey data of around 10,000 households from 10 OECD countries, we identify the driving factors of household adoption of water-efficient equipment by estimating Probit models of a household’s probability to invest in such equipment. The results indicate that environmental attitudes and ownership status are strong predictors of adoption of water-efficient equipment. In terms of policy, we find that households that were both metered and charged for their water individually had a much higher probability to invest in water-efficient equipment compared to households that paid a flat fee.     

Implementing Environmental Regulation: Enforcement and Compliance

Journal of Regulatory Economics -     

Adoption Gaps of Environmental Adaptation Technologies with Public Effects

Environmental and Resource Economics - As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2018) testifies, the world is a long way from halting climate change, let alone reverting it. The existence...     

环境政策诱导下的技术扩散效应研究

通过建立代表者厂商为满足环境政策要求而进行技术选择的模型,描述在环境政策作用下污染性技术、过渡性技术和清洁技术三种不同技术的扩散路径.研究发现,环境政策对于清洁技术扩散的效应有着重要影响.在有多种技术可供选择时,企业能根据自身特点决定采用何种技术.过渡性技术的存在给企业和政府提供了一个缓冲,以实现从污染性生产技术到清洁生产技术的平滑过渡,最终实现整个产业的升级.     

Incentives to Diffuse Advanced Abatement Technology Under the Formation of International Environmental Agreements

We analyse the incentives for polluting firms to diffuse and adopt advanced abatement technology in a framework in which governments negotiate an international environmental agreement. These incentives crucially depend on whether the underlying environmental policy instrument is an emission tax or an emission quota. The results for the international setting fundamentally differ from those for the national setting that have been elaborated upon in the earlier literature. In particular, equilibrium diffusion and adoption of advanced abatement technology are not necessarily optimal under the tax regime and may be even lower than those under the quota regime.     

Self-enforcing International Environmental Agreements with Costly Monitoring for Compliance

Theoretical analyses of international environmental agreements (IEAs) have often employed the concept of self-enforcing agreements to predict the number of parties to such an agreement. The term self-enforcing, however, is a bit misleading. The concept refers to the stability of cooperative agreements, not to enforcing compliance with these agreements once they are in place. In this paper we analyze an IEA game in which parties to an agreement finance an independent monitor who audits the compliance performance of the members of an agreement. These audits reveal instances of noncompliance so they can be sanctioned. We find that costly monitoring of compliance limits the circumstances under which international cooperation to protect the environment is worthwhile, but when IEAs do form they will often involve greater participation than IEAs that do not require costly monitoring. Consequently, costly monitoring of IEAs can produce higher international environmental quality. Moreover, under certain conditions, aggregate welfare is higher when IEAs require costly monitoring.      

Foreign Aid as Prize: Incentives for a Pro-Poor Policy

The authors develop a theoretical model of foreign aid to analyze a method of disbursement of aid which induces the recipient government to follow a more pro-poor policy than it otherwise would do. In their two-period model, aid is given in the second period and the volume of it depends on the level of well-being of the target group in the first period. They find that this way of designing aid does increase the welfare of the poor. They also consider the situations where the donor and the recipient governments act simultaneously as well as sequentially, and they find that, by moving first in a sequential game, the donor country can, under certain conditions, increase the welfare of the poor and that of its own country compared to the case of simultaneous moves.     

环境管制政策的比较分析

命令控制型的环境管制政策能较快地控制污染排放,但缺乏效率,且不利于技术创新,激励型的环境管制政策具有成本低、技术创新激励性强的特点.基于此,近年来世界各国对激励型的环境管制政策日益重视.我国未来环境管制政策的设计应更多地引入市场机制,强化环境政策对技术进步的激励作用,并适度结合命令控制型的环境管制工具.     

Fiscal Policy and Welfare in a Small Open Economy with Imperfect Competition

This paper considers the effects of fiscal policy in a two-sector small open economy, with unionized labour markets, and heterogeneous types of imperfect competition in the product markets. By making the marginal propensity to import endogenous, the paper shows that there is no robust or general relationship between the balanced-budget multiplier and the degree of imperfect competition. The fiscal multiplier with distortionary taxes can be positive or negative, depending on the size of the importables sector and the foreign firm's market share. The normative rule for fiscal policy depends on the size of the fiscal multiplier. An increase in economic activity is insufficient by itself to induce the government to over-supply public goods relative to the Walrasian case.     

Environmental Valuation with Imperfect Information The Case of the Random Utility Model

This paper considers welfare analysis with therandom utility model (RUM) when perceptions ofenvironmental quality differ from objectivemeasures of environmental quality. Environmental quality is assumed to be anexperience good, so that while perceptions ofquality determine choices, ex postutility is determined by objective quality. Given this assumption, I derive a measure ofthe welfare impact of changes in environmentalquality, and I show how this new welfaremeasure differs from the traditional welfaremeasure developed by Hanemann (1982). This newwelfare measure provides an approach tomeasuring the value of information aboutenvironmental quality within the framework ofthe random utility model.     

信息、承诺与激励——理解中国农业生产激励变迁中的国家角色

平均化的分配方式和退出权的剥夺导致人民公社内部的作物生产激励不足。但由国家管制政策引起的作物生产激励问题经常被研究者所忽略。文章发展了信息分权基础上的国家承诺分析框架,由于工业化目标,国家通过建立人民公社以降低治理成本,其中,人民公社承担了收集、处理作物种植信息并提取相应农业剩余的职能,从而导致人民公社面临严重的外部激励问题。20世纪70年代末期,财政困境促使国家放松对农业部门的组织化治理,允许以家户为单位的作物生产方法。这事实上放松了对作物生产的信息控制,由信息分权引起的国家承诺具有可信性,有效地增加了农民权利的安全性及其生产激励,构成农业部门生产效率改善的重要源泉。     

The Effect of Rebate and Loan Incentives on Residential Heat Pump Adoption: Evidence from North Carolina

Environmental and Resource Economics - Electrification can promote deep decarbonization to tackle climate change with a cleaner power grid. Electric heat pumps provide a feasible and...