Optimal Differentiation of International Environmental Taxes in the Presence of National Labor Market Distortions

We explore the implication of the `doubledividend' debate for international environmentaltaxes. In our scenario, small open economies withdifferent labor market distortions follow a commonenvironmental policy and use national environmentaltax revenues to finance labor tax cuts. Since thedouble dividend hypothesis does not hold, a high labortax implies a low environmental tax relative to othercountries. The optimal differentiation ofinternational environmental taxes is proven to be afunction of the national labor tax rates and theuncompensated elasticities of labor supply.     

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.     

Tradeable Emission Permits Regulations in the Presence of Imperfectly Competitive Product Markets: Welfare Implications

In the present paper, we analyse the interaction of a competitive market for emission permits with an oligopolistic product market. It is well known that a competitive permits market achieves the cost minimizing distribution of abatement effort among the polluting firms for a given reduction in emissions. However, when the product market is oligopolistic, it may redistribute production inefficiently among firms. It has been suggested that this inefficiency can outweigh the gains obtained from using emission permits instead of command and control. Although this argument is clearly correct under full information, it is shown in the present paper that it reverses under incomplete information. In particular, it is shown that when tradeable emission permits are specified according to the standard textbook example, they yield higher social welfare than the command and control regulation.     

Foreign Direct Investment and Environmental Taxes

Abstract. This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on environmental policy stringency in a two-country model with trade costs, where FDI could be unilateral and bilateral and both governments address local pollution through environmental taxes. We show that FDI does not give rise to ecological dumping because the host country has an incentive to shift rents away from the source country toward the host country. Environmental policy strategies and welfare effects are studied under the assumption that parameter values support FDI to be profitable.     

Product Quality and the Optimal Structure of Commodity Taxes

The comparison between ad valorem and specific taxation is among the oldest issues in formal public finance and is important for policy in the European Union (EU) and elsewhere. This paper develops and articulates simple but very general elasticity rules that characterize the optimal balance between the two in a model of endogenous product quality. These rules temper the preference for ad valorem taxation that emerges from homogeneous product models, pointing to relatively heavy reliance on whichever form of taxation has the least effect on product quality.     

Vertical Product Differentiation When Quality is Scarce: The Case of n > 2 Firms

This paper describes a model of vertical product differentiation in which more than two firms compete in quality and price. Quality is of fixed supply, so firms participate in an auction to attain it. Firms then simultaneously choose prices. The paper determines equilibrium bids in the quality auction and the Bertrand equilibrium prices. In equilibrium one firm attains all the units of quality, but pays a price such that it, like the minimum-quality firms, earns zero profits. Aggregate welfare is computed, and is shown to decrease as competition increases.     

Product Differentiation and Public Education

We demonstrate that differentiation in public services can arise as a way of reducing competition among cities. Quality differentiation can be particularly relevant to the provision of education. If cities finance education through a property tax that generates "tax competition," we find that quality differentiation in education changes the amount of educational services provided. In the case of property-value maximization, this means a reduction in educational services in both the city with high quality and that with low quality. The reduction in educational services means that under reasonable conditions property values in both cities can increase.     

Eco-Labeling and Horizontal Product Differentiation

This paper investigates the impact of eco-labels on the abatement of emissions in a market with horizontal product differentiation. A distinction is made between an end-of-pipe abatement method and a clean technology approach. In the former case underinvestment is likely to occur even if the marginal willingness to pay for abatement of consumers is equal to the social marginal benefit of abatement. The level of abatement depends on the number of firms and on the number of consumers. For a large market with few firms overinvestment in abatement is also possible. Clean technology abatement achieves a first best level regardless of market size if all consumers have a marginal willingness to pay for abatement equal to its social benefit.     

Emission Taxes and Optimal Refunding Schemes with Endogenous Market Structure

The purpose of this paper is to investigate optimal schemes for refunding the emission tax in a free-entry market where the production process generates emissions. We consider the regulation by a three-part tax policy: the government sets an emission tax, a refunding scheme, and an entry-license tax. In contrast to the case of the two-part tax-refund policy under no entry, we show that even if it is impossible to obtain subsidies from outside, the first-best outcome is always attained. Further, the government’s budget constraint is binding under the optimal schemes. Our result implies that the tax-refund system works effectively in a market with endogenous entry.     

Voluntary Environmental Agreements vs. Emission Taxes in Strategic Trade Models

The purpose of the paper is to narrow the gap between the widespread use of voluntary agreements and research on the rationale of such approaches. A topical example are voluntary agreements of many industries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because of global warming. If the industry anticipates that taxes and fees will be introduced in the coming years, it seems rational to act in advance in order to mitigate the tax levels.The conventional approach in strategic trade and tax models was to look at a two-stage game where governments set taxes first and then firms react. In such a policy regime the government is concerned about the international competitiveness of its firms and sets taxes below marginal damages. In this paper, we consider a policy regime with a reversed timing. Firms commit themselves in the face of emission taxes to abatement efforts and to lower levels of the environmentally intensive output. Then the government introduces the tax. Under this timing of strategies the tax is equal to marginal damage. Firms waive profit and reduce output in order to use less of the polluting input. The reward for this behavior will be a less strict use of policy instruments and hence lower abatement costs in the near future.     

Environmental Product Differentiation and Environmental Awareness

In this paper, we have considered a duopolistic model of environmental product differentiation with two types of consumers (green and brown) to analyze how environmental awareness affects the environment. “Green” consumers value the physical and environmental attributes of the good they purchase while “brown” consumers only value the physical attributes. We find that more environmental awareness may not be good news for the environment as the firm that produces the good without environmental attributes may increase its sales. The result depends on the degree of product differentiation and the cost to achieve it. Social welfare can also be inversely related to environmental awareness if the negative environmental effect dominates the positive market effect.      

A Comparison of Emission Taxes and Permit Markets for Controlling Correlated Externalities

This paper provides an answer to the question: Are emission taxes an efficient and self-enforcing mechanism to control correlated externality problems? By “correlated externalities” we mean multiple pollutants that are jointly produced by a single source but cause differentiated regional and global externalities. By “self-enforcing” we mean a mechanism that accounts for the endogeneity that exists between competing jurisdictions in the setting of environmental policy within a federation of regions. This mechanism incorporates sequential decision making among the jurisdictions and therefore determines an equilibrium based on the concept of subgame perfection. We find that, unlike joint domestic and international tradable permit markets, joint emission taxes and a hybrid scheme of permits and taxes are neither efficient nor self-enforcing.     

Emission Taxes and Tradeable Permits A Comparison of Views on Long-Run Efficiency

We compare three different views on the long runefficiencies of emission taxes which includethresholds (inframarginalexemptions), and of tradeable emission permitswhere some permits areinitially free. The differences are caused bydifferent assumptions aboutwhether thresholds and free permits should besubsidies given only to firmsthat produce, or full property rights. Treatingtax thresholds, as well asfree permits, as property rights would departfrom the conventional view,but would allow greater flexibility in makingeconomic instruments bothefficient and acceptable. Such flexibilitycould be very important inachieving efficient control of greenhouse gasemissions.     

Strategic Environmental Policies in the Presence of Foreign Direct Investment

We analyze strategic environmental standards in the presence of foreign direct investment. A number of foreign firms located in a host country compete with a domestic firm in another country to export a homogeneous good to a third country. When the number of foreign firms is exogenous, the host country applies a stricter environmental regulation than the other producing country. However, under free entry and exit of foreign firms, the host country may apply a less severe standard under both non-cooperative and cooperative equilibrium. We also find that the nature market structure does not affect the equilibrium values of total pollution if export subsidies are also used.JEL Classification: F2, H2     

渠道与产品差异下的供应链技术创新协同策略

考虑电子直销渠道,构建了由两个制造商和一个零售商组成的供应链的技术创新协同模型,研究了其中一个制造商引入电子直销渠道后产品替代度和渠道替代度对零售商的创新补贴、两制造商的批发折扣以及供应链技术创新协同策略的影响。研究发现:产品差异性越小、渠道替代度越大,越有利于实施技术创新协同策略;仅从利润视角看,技术创新协同策略无法实现供应链系统的帕累托改进,但将之与市场份额视角相结合来看,能在一定程度上缓解渠道冲突,对各成员都有益。     

国外异质性厂商贸易理论研究综述

异质性厂商贸易理论代表了国际贸易理论最新发展趋势,研究的是微观经济主体--厂商的贸易和投资行为与自身特征的关系.厂商的市场进入方式与其生产率水平是相对应的,出口和贸易自由化能够提高行业生产率,汇率变化、贸易政策和产业集聚对厂商出口具有重要的影响,厂商进入出口市场前后存在自我选择效应和出口中学习效应,这两种效应都导致厂商生产率提高,最终生产率最高的厂商将以对外直接投资的方式进入国际市场.     

Public Stackelberg Leadership in a Mixed Oligopoly with Foreign Firms

This is the first paper to consider a mixed oligopoly in which a public Stackelberg leader competes with both domestic and foreign private firms. The welfare maximising leader is shown to always produce less than under previous Cournot conjectures. Introducing leadership also alters previous public pricing rules resulting in prices that may be either greater than or less than marginal cost depending on the relative number of domestic firms. Furthermore, entry of a foreign firm will increase welfare only when the relative number of domestic firms is small, but that share is shown to be larger than has been indicated without leadership. Unlike previous models, the influence on public profit of a foreign acquisition is ambiguous and is related to the relative number of domestic firms. Finally, the consequences of privatisation are shown, for the first time, to depend on the relative number of domestic firms.     

外部需求与企业出口产品质量

本文研究了外部需求影响企业出口产品质量的效应及机制。利用2000～2011年BACI数据库和中国海关数据库构建尽量外生的企业—目的地—年份层面的外部需求变量,并采用需求函数法估算企业—目的地—产品—年份层面的出口产品质量。研究结论表明,外部需求变动同方向影响企业出口产品质量,亦即正向(负向)外部需求提升(降低)出口产品质量,该结论在改变外部需求、产品质量测算方法后仍然成立。作用机制分析与检验表明,外部需求引致的市场规模效应和市场竞争效应是外部需求影响企业出口产品质量的有效渠道。此外,异质性分析发现,外部需求对民营企业、中间品和资本品、一般贸易企业的出口产品质量的影响效应更加明显,且来自中高收入目的地的需求变动对企业出口产品质量的影响效应最大。以上结论为企业面对外部需求变动和提高出口产品质量提供了理论依据和政策启示。