Economic instruments for emission abatement under appreciable technological indivisibilities

The paper explores the performance of decentralized incentives when abatement involves technological indivisibilities. Technologically, pollution abatement is often carried out as a discrete process, if pollution reduction involves relatively large-scale investments in emission abatement equipment.Consequently, the firm's response to decentralized economic incentives for pollution abatement is affected by the indivisible property of the technology. It can be shown that in such cases efficiency may not be realized. Installing an abatement device may entail too much or too little investment compared with the eficient solution.To partially remedy this problem, an incentive scheme which incorporates a fine (penalty) on pollution-induced damages is proposed in this paper. Essentially, as in the case of the command and control approach, the mechanism imposes a fine when firms do not meet an aggregate (e.g., a bubble) emission level. The fine is set as a proportion of the polluting firm's share of the total excess damage inflicted when the standard has been violated. The paper explores alternative outcomes under this scheme in the framework of a non-cooperative game.The outcomes under command and control (uniform percentage reductions), taxes, pollution permits and the fine scheme are illustrated with data from the haifa area in northern Israel. They are compared with the social planner solution in terms of efficiency (achieving a given standard at minimum cost) and the volume of transfer cost.     

Finance,investment and innovation: A theoretical and empirical comparative analysis

The paper compares the relative efficiency of country models in the relationship between finance and investments. Results, confirmed under three different panel data estimates (Arellano-Bond GMM method, random and fixed effect estimates) suggest that: i) the UK thick market reduces informational asymmetries for large firms and for those firms providing good signals to shareholders; ii) the Japanese vertical (between firms and banks) integration and horizontal (among firms) integration almost eliminates financial constraints (the horizontal integration effect) and equates agency costs across firms (the vertical integration effect). These results are consistent with the short-termist hypothesis which assumes that the Japanese economic system can process information more efficiently reducing managerial myopic behaviour and thereby determining positive effects on long term growth.     

Die verschiedenen Konzepte des Akzelerators

Summary In theoretical analysis the accelerator concept is attractive because it can explain changes in investment which do not run parallel to demand. Empirical tests of the accelerator usually show unsatisfactory results. This is partly due to the specification used for the estimation: the relation between capital stock and production (the first level of estimation) is not popular because of the time trend in the variables; instead frequently a regression of investment expenditure on the change in production (second level of estimation) is applied. But because of the cyclical variations in the capital-output ratio this specification is not a good substitute for the first one.This paper shows that with the help of the relation between capital stock and output (naive accelerator) the highly different phases of investment activity can be explained, but that the individual annual observations follow another set of rules.Within the flexible accelerator the attemps that use only flow magnitudes do not represent a further development, but rather a counter-hypothesis of the original accelerator concept: flow magnitudes can explain medium-term variations only to a very small extent. This is contrary to the accelerator concept which explains considerable investment variations with the help of relatively small output variations. Attempts which explain investment variations through a connection between output and capital stock, expand the accelerator theory in so far as they take account of disequilibrium situations. The econometrically estimated equations give an excellent picture of short-term and medium-term investment activity. The economic interpretation of this equation shows, however, that in addition to the explicitly used variables (capital stock and output) other magnitudes contribute implicity to these excellent results. The merit of the accelerator theory then is not to be seen in a complete explanation of investment behavior, but rather in the fact that it shows highly variable investment demand for capacity purposes which again is dampened by other factors in such a way as to exhibit medium-term variations in capacity utilization.     

Investment Under Monetary Uncertainty: A Panel Data Investigation

There is a presumption in the literature that price or exchange rate uncertainty, or uncertainty in the monetary conditions underlying them, will have a negative effect on investment. Some argue that this negative effect will be extended by imperfect competition. However, models of irreversible investment show that the situation is more complicated than that. In these models, investment expenditures are affected by the scrapping price available on world markets and also by the opportunity cost of waiting rather than investing. The impact of uncertainty is therefore going to depend on the type of industry and hence on the industrial structure of the economy concerned. In addition, it may depend on the persistence of any price misalignments away from competitive equilibrium. In this paper, we put these theoretical predictions to the test. We estimate investment equations for 13 different industries using data for nine OECD countries over the period 1970–2000. We find that the impact of price uncertainty is negative or insignificant in all but one case whereas the impact of (nominal) exchange rate uncertainty is negative in only six cases, positive in four cases, and insignificant in three others. In addition, there are conflicting effects from the real exchange rate. The net effect depends on whether the source of the uncertainty is in domestic markets or in foreign markets.     

Constitutions for Local Collective Action and Institutional Interdependence

Collective action can take place at a plurality of levels. It has to be based on a constitution which defines the basic rules of interaction. Here, we are concerned with the problem of the constitutional setting of bottom-up formal institutions with a club nature. The pressure to improve the efficiency of services pushes local administrations to co-ordinate to produce public goods. This process has stimulated the birth of different forms of agencies or private companies with a club nature. The aim of this paper is to discuss the effects of institutional interdependence on the efficiency of this kind of collective action. In order to shed some light on this problem, the paper first discusses the problem of the relativity of efficiency to the institutional setting. A framework of analysis is then discussed to identify the main factors affecting collective action. Finally some evidence will be provided by a comparative institutional analysis performed on some case studies concerning local associational forms among communes in north-eastern Italy.     

Catching-Up Investment without Regulatory Commitment

This paper analyses a regulated firms incentives to undertake catching-up investments when the firm has private information about the initial technology and the regulator is unable to commit himself to incentive contracts prior to the firms investment decision. In the absence of commitment power, the firm takes into account that the investment decision may serve as a signal to the regulator about the firms initial technology. Any pure strategy equilibrium of the signaling game is shown to be pooling in the sense that the efficient type mimics the inefficient type by investing. By not following this strategy, the efficient type reveals its efficiency to the regulator, who responds by inducing the firm to produce without rents. Restricting attention to undefeated pooling equilibria, the level of investment is shown to be lower than the first-best level.     

A New Variant of the Winner's Curse in a Coasian Contracting Game

We examine behavior in a Coasian contracting game with incomplete information. Experimental subjects propose contracts, while automaton property right holders or robot players with uncertain preferences respond to those proposals. The most common pattern of proposals observed in these games results in too many agreements and, in some games, payoffs that are stochastically dominated by those resulting from rational proposals (which imply fewer agreements). In this sense, we observe a winner's curse similar to that observed in bidding games under incomplete information, such as the common value auction (Kagel, J.H. and Levin, D. (1986) American Economic Review. 76, 894–920) and the takeover game (Samuelson, W. and Bazerman, M.H. (1985) In Research in Experimental Economics, Vol. 3. JAI Press, Greenwich, pp. 105–137; Ball, S.B., Bazerman, M.H., and Carroll, J.S. (1990) Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 48, 1–22; Holt, C. and Sherman, R. (1994) American Economic Review. 84, 642–652). While the naïve model of behavior nicely predicts the winner's curse in those previous bidding games, it does not do so here. Instead, an alternative model we call the guarantor model explains the anomalous behavior best. Hence, we suggest this is a new variant of the winner's curse.     

The greenhouse effect: Damages,costs and abatement

The buildup of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — CO₂ in particular-appears to be having an adverse impact on the global climate. This paper briefly reviews current expectations with regard to physical and biological effects, their potential costs to society, and likely costs of abatement. For a worst case scenario it is impossible to assess, in economic terms, the full range of possible non-linear synergistic effects. In the most favorable (although not necessarily likely) case (of slow-paced climate change), however, it seems likely that the impacts are within the affordable range, at least in the industrialized countries of the world. In the third world the notion of affordability is of doubtful relevance, making the problem of quantitative evaluation almost impossible. We tentatively assess the lower limit of quantifiable climate-induced damages at $30 to $35 per ton of CO₂ equivalent, worldwide, with the major damages being concentrated in regions most adversely affected by sea-level rise. The non-quantifiable environmental damages are also significant and should by no means be disregarded.The costs and benefits of (1) reducing CFC use and (2) reducing fossil fuel consumption, as a means of abatement, are considered in some detail. This strategy has remarkably high indirect benefits in terms of reduced air pollution damage and even direct cost savings to consumers. The indirect benefits of reduced air pollution and its associated health and environmental effects from fossil-fuel combustion in the industrialized countries range from $20 to $60 per ton of CO₂ eliminated. In addition, there is good evidence that modest (e.g. 25%) reductions in CO₂ emissions may be achievable by the U.S. (and, by implication, for other countries) by a combination of increased energy efficiency and restructuring that would permit simultaneous direct economic benefits (savings) to energy consumers of the order of $50 per ton of CO₂ saved. A higher level of overall emissions reduction — possibly approaching 50% — could probably be achieved, at little or not net cost, by taking advantage of these savings.We suggest the use of taxes on fossil fuel extraction (or a carbon tax) as a reasonable way of inducing the structural changes that would be required to achieve significant reduction in energy use and CO₂ emissions. To minimize the economic burden (and create a political constituency in support of the approach) we suggest the substitution of resource-based taxes in general for other types of taxes (on labor, income, real estate, or trade) that are now the main sources of government revenue. While it is conceded that it would be difficult to calculate the optimal tax on extractive resources, we do not think this is a necessary prerequisite to policy-making. In fact, we note that the existing tax system has never been optimized according to theoretical principles, and is far from optimal by any reasonable criteria.During the academic year 1989–90 Dr. Ayres was at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria.During the summer of 1989 Mr. Walter was a member of the Young Scientists' Summer Program at IIASA.     

Coordination as a Criterion for Economic “Goodness”

Welfare economics requires a criterion for economic goodness in regard to a society. Unlike conventional criteria, coordination (among independent decisionmakers) does not violate methodological individualism. The coordination criterion can be objectively deployed to judge events or policies, referring only to the given preference rankings of relevant individuals, given their initial positions. An important variant refers not to the attained (or unattained) state of achieved coordination, but to the ability of events or policies to affect the process through which a better-coordinated state may be approached. Several implications of the coordination criterion are explored.     

Die Komponenten des Rückganges der Ausländerbeschäftigung

Summary During the crisis of 1974/75 the number of foreign workers in Western European countries has been reduced. This has caused a new discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of the employment of foreign workers. Whatever the attitude towards this problem may be, it is useful to decompose the reduction of foreign labour into categories. First of all a certain amount of foreign labour will be reduced due to a general decrease of overall employment. This influence may be called proportionality effect. The share of foreign workers in the different branches of the economy allows the calculation of a structural effect. Both of them measure influences, which concern foreigners as well as nationals. Only the remaining influence is specific to foreigners. It may again be split into a reduction effect and a substitution effect. The former ist concerned with that part of total reduction of foreign workers, which corresponds to the decrease of employment, i.e. employment reduction by dismissal of foreign workers. The latter pertains to that part of reduction, which exceeds the decrease of employment, i.e. by this magnitude domestic labour has been substituted for foreign labour.The application of this model to the years 1974 and 1975 shows no proportionality effect (1974 it is even positive), a limited structural effect, but a high reduction effect. The substitution effect is considerable in 1974 but of minor importance in 1975. So foreign labour in Austria served actually as cyclical buffer but mainly by reduction and only partly by substitution.     

Legal Remedies for Breach of the Regulatory “Contract”

We present a model of the regulatory contract that focuses on the mutual investment of buyer and seller and recognizes the cost of contractual renegotiation and the importance of breach remedies when contracts are incomplete. We model renegotiation as a litigation game played before a quasi-judicial administrative court. We find that the standard contractual remedy of expectations damages cannot implement first-best levels of investment for both buyer and seller. If the seller fully recovers its sunk investment upon buyer breach, however, then first-best levels of investment by both buyer and seller can be supported provided litigation costs are small enough.     

How Large are the Welfare Gains from Technological Innovation Induced by Environmental Policies?

This paper examines whether the welfare gains from technological innovation that reduces future abatement costs are larger or smaller than the Pigouvian welfare gains from optimal pollution control. The relative welfare gains from innovation depend on three key factors—the initially optimal level of abatement, the speed at which innovation reduces future abatement costs, and the discount rate. We calculate the welfare gains from innovation under a variety of different scenarios. Mostly they are less than the Pigouvian welfare gains. To be greater, innovation must reduce abatement costs substantially and quickly and the initially optimal abatement level must be fairly modest.     

Capital risk and consumption puzzles: A pedagogical note

A two-period consumption model with an ordinal certainty equivalent preference is developed to characterize the comparative static effect of an increase in uncertainty of investment returns on the riskfree interest rate, the equity premium, expected growth of consumption, and the marginal propensity to consume out of current income. The results reconcile a few often reported consumption-related anomalies.     

Learning in a Laboratory Market with Random Supply and Demand

We propose a simple adaptive learning model to study behavior in the call market. The laboratory environment features buyers and sellers who receive a new random value or cost in each period, so they must learn a strategy that maps these random draws into bids or asks. We focus on buyers' adjustment of the mark-down ratio of bids relative to private value and sellers' adjustment of the corresponding mark-up ratio of asks relative to private cost. The learning model involves partial adjustment of these ratios towards the ex post optimum each period. The model explains a substantial proportion of the variation in traders' strategies. Parameter estimates indicate strong recency effects and negligible autonomous trend, but strongly asymmetric response to different kinds of ex post error. The asymmetry is only slightly attenuated in observational learning from other traders' ex post errors. Simulations show that the model can account for the main systematic deviations from equilibrium predictions observed in this market institution and environment.     

Piercing the Veil of Uncertainty in Transboundary Pollution Agreements

This paper addresses the question of how uncertainty in costs and benefits affects the difficulty of reaching a voluntary agreement among sovereign states. A measure of difficulty is constructed related to side-payments necessary to make an agreement a Pareto-improving move. Using a simple model, it is shown that uncertainty actually makes agreement easier.JEL classifications: Q5, H4, D7, D8An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference on Risk and Uncertainty in Environmental and Resource Economics, Wageningen, The Netherlands, June 2002.     

Technological paradigms,patterns of learning and development: An introductory roadmap

This paper presents an evolutionary microeconomic theory of innovation and production and discusses its implications for development theory. Using the notions of technological paradigm and trajectory, it develops an alternative view of firm behavior and learning. It is shown then how these are embedded in broader national systems of innovation which account for persistent differences in technological cappacities between countries. Finally, this bottom-up evolutionary analysis is linked with an institutional top-down approach, and the potential fruitfulness of this dialogue is demonstrated.We thank the discussants and participants at the workshop on Technology and Competitiveness in Developing Countries, Venice, 26/11/93, for their useful comments.The research leading to this work has benefited at various stages from the support of the Italian National Research Council (CNR, Progetto Strategico Combiamento Technologico e Crescita Economica) and of the International Institute of Applied System Analysis (IIASA, Austria).     

Ein Entscheidungsmodell für Konsumieren und Sparen

Summary The present study analyses the simultaneous problem of consumption and saving by means of a consistent demand system; for this purpose the linear—expenditure—system (LES), developed by R. Stone, has been modified and used as a methodological base. Saving takes, for the sake of operationality, the character of a consumer—good and becomes an argument of the utility function. The usual neoclassical assumption of utility maximization allows the derivation of a linear expenditure system of consumption and saving (LESSC) when prices and income are given. The simultaneous LESSC-model has remarkable weaknesses, however: the assumption of certainty, the static character of the model, the disregard for major savings—motives and private expenditure on homebuiding led to bad elasticity—estimates. The assumpion of directly—additive utility functions causes furthermore collinearity between income—and price—elasticities such that the meaning of the derived elasticities is greatly reduced.The income—elasticities derived from the LESSC are positive throughout but show a remarkable variance. The calculation of the Friedman—bias demonstrates a rather strong bias due to the assumption of certainty. A modification resulted in income—elasticities of private consumption and savings of around 0,93 (unmodified: 0,88) and 1,41 (unmodified: 1,76). The demand for consumption goods of great necessity was income—inelastic whereas the demand for goods of less importance to survival was income—elastic. An analysis of income—elasticities of the disaggregated system and the relation between transitory components of consumption and income existing in Austria gave the impression that unexpected changes in income are not only reflected in saving but also in changes of the consumption—structure.The respective price—elasticites are all negative and smaller than 1. For less important consumption—goods lower price—elasticities have been measured and for easily substitutable goods higher ones. Marked crossprice—elasticities could only by discovered with clothing and food products. Generally it can be said that an increase in prices of goods of the daily needs hits both the expenditure on easily substitutable consumption goods and causes dissaving.A comparison with the elasticities calculated through OLS shows a greater reliance of LESSC—elasticities as far as data of differing aggregation levels are concerned.

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Mécanique Sociale may one day take her place along with Mécanique Celeste throned each upon the double—sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science.     

On economic disequilibrium and free lunch

There is a sharp disagreement between mainstream economists and advocates of energy efficiency as regards the potential for free lunches or no regrets policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions. From an economics perspective, the critical question is whether the economic system is — or is not — close to a Pareto-optimum equilibrium state. If so, it follows that most technological systems now in place are optimum, or nearly so, from an economic perspective. If not, there may be many sub-optimal technologies in place, with corresponding opportunities for very high returns on appropriate investments. This paper presents some of the evidence supporting the latter thesis.     

Communication in dynastic repeated games: ‘Whitewashes’ and ‘coverups’

Summary. We ask whether communication can directly substitute for memory in dynastic repeated games in which short lived individuals care about the utility of their offspring who replace them in an infinitely repeated game. Each individual is unable to observe what happens before his entry in the game. Past information is therefore conveyed from one cohort to the next by means of communication.When communication is costless and messages are sent simultaneously, communication mechanisms or protocols exist that sustain the same set of equilibrium payoffs as in the standard repeated game. When communication is costless but sequential, the incentives to whitewash the unobservable past history of play become pervasive. These incentives to whitewash can only be countered if some player serves as a neutral historian who verifies the truthfulness of others reports while remaining indifferent in the process. By contrast, when communication is sequential and (lexicographically) costly, all protocols admit only equilibria that sustain stage Nash equilibrium payoffs.We also analyze a centralized communication protocol in which history leaves a footprint that can only hidden by the current cohort by a unanimous coverup. We show that in this case the set of payoffs that are sustainable in equilibrium coincides with the weakly renegotiation proof payoffs of the standard repeated game.Received: 30 September 2002, Revised: 5 August 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: C72, C73, D82.We wish to thank an Associate Editor and Dino Gerardi as well as seminar participants at Arizona State, Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Indiana, Montreal, Princeton, Rochester, Vanderbilt, VPI, the 2001 NSF/NBER Decentralization Conference, the Summer 2001 North American Econometric Society Meetings, and the Midwest Theory Conference, 2000, for useful comments and suggestions. All errors are our own.     

Sector-specific capital, “Bang-bang” investment,and the Filippov solution

Bang-bang investment in a two-sector growth model with immobile capital is rational and leads to a unique and globally stable long-run equilibrium along a sliding trajectory. This steady state coincides with the stationary equilibrium in the traditional model with non-sector-specific capital.This article was written while the authors were visiting scholars at Cornell University. We gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the Erasmus University Trust Fund and the Netherlands Scientific Organization. We would like to thank, without implicating, two anonymous referees, Martijn Herrmann, Jean-Marie Viaene, Claus Weddepohl, and the participants of seminars at the University of Maryland, the University of Montreal, and Erasmus University Rotterdam for perceptive remarks and useful comments. Jeroen Hinloopen and Rien Wagenvoort provided able graphical assistance. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the World Bank.