Process R&;D and Product Line Deletion by a Multiproduct Monopolist

Relative to single-product firms, a multiproduct monopolist can internalize the negative externalities of its R&D investments (the ``cannibalization effect') in two ways: (1) To lower R&D investment for each product; and (2) To delete some of its product lines so as to enlarge the market size for the remaining lines. It is shown that line deletion is profitable if products are close substitutes. If products are not close substitutes, the multiproduct monopolist keeps all product lines and invests less in cost-reducing R&D than single-product firms engaging in Cournot competition with product differentiation. However, it invests more in R&D than single-product firms if there are significant economies of scope in R&D, or if the oligopolistic firms can cooperate in their R&D decisions.      

Climate Change Taxes and Energy Efficiency in Japan

In 2003 Japan proposed a Climate Change Tax to reduce its CO₂ emissions to the level required by the Kyoto Protocol. If implemented, the tax would be levied on fossil fuel use and the revenue distributed to encourage the purchase of energy efficient equipment. Analysis using the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model shows that this policy is unlikely to bring Japan into compliance with its Kyoto target unless the subsidy encourages improvement in energy intensity well beyond Japan’s recent historical experience. Similar demand-management programs in the US, where there has been extensive experience, have not been nearly as effective as they would need to be to achieve energy efficiency goals of the proposal. The Tax proposal also calls for limits on international emission trading. We find that this limit substantially affects costs of compliance. The welfare loss with full emissions trading is 1/6 that when Japan meets its target though domestic actions only, the carbon price is lower, and there is a smaller loss of energy-intensive exports. Japan can achieve substantial savings from emissions trading even under cases where, for example, the full amount of the Russian allowance is not available in international markets.     

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.     

Punishment,counterpunishment and sanction enforcement in a social dilemma experiment

We present the results of an experiment that explores the sanctioning behavior of individuals who experience a social dilemma. In the game we study, players choose contribution levels to a public good and subsequently have multiple opportunities to reduce the earnings of the other members of the group. The treatments vary in terms of individuals’ opportunities to (a) avenge sanctions that have been directed toward themselves, and (b) punish others’ sanctioning behavior with respect to third parties. We find that individuals do avenge sanctions they have received, and this serves to decrease contribution levels. They also punish those who fail to sanction third parties, but the resulting increase in contributions is smaller than the decrease the avenging of sanctions induces. When there are five rounds of unrestricted sanctioning, contributions and welfare are significantly lower than when only one round of sanctioning opportunities exists, and welfare is lower than at a benchmark of zero cooperation. We thank James Andreoni, participants in seminars at Emory University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, Deakin University, the 2004 North American Regional Meetings of the ESA in Tucson, Arizona, USA, the 2004 IMEBE Meetings in Cordoba, Spain, and the 2005 SAET meetings in Vigo, Spain, for constructive and helpful comments. We thank Elven Priour for programming and organization of the sessions. Instructions for the experiment are available from the authors.     

Passive learning: a critique by example

In models of learning by experimentation that exhibit signal dependence, a benchmark using a passive learner has been proposed. The use of this benchmark is flawed – first, passive learning does not disentangle the effects of knowing that beliefs, as well as other state variables, might change, and we address this issue directly by introducing a naïve learner. Secondly, and more tellingly, passive learning does not do what it is supposed to do, namely help measure the gains from active experimentation; the naïve learner enables us to illustrate this point in the context of a particular example.     

Spatial Evolution of Social Norms in a Common-Pool Resource Game

We study the conditions for the emergence of cooperation in a spatial common-pool resource (CPR) game. We consider three types of agents: cooperators, defectors and enforcers. The role of enforcers is to punish defectors for overharvesting the resource. Agents are located on a circle and they only observe the actions of their two nearest neighbors. Their payoffs are determined by both local and global interactions and they modify their actions by imitating the strategy in their neighborhood with the highest average payoffs on average. Using theoretical and numerical analysis, we find a large diversity of equilibria to be the outcome of the game. In particular, we find conditions for the occurrence of equilibria in which the three strategies coexist. We also derive the stability of these equilibria. Finally, we show that introducing resource dynamics in the system favors the occurrence of cooperative equilibria.      

Energy Prices and Carbon Taxes under Uncertainty about Global Warming

This paper extends the strategic interactions between producers of fossil fuels concerned about their profits and a taxing government concerned about the consumers’ welfare for uncertainty: global warming follows an Itô -process. Stochasticity requires to differentiate between reversible and irreversible emissions in contrast to the deterministic version. The unconstrained (= reversible) case allows for a closed form solution but not the more realistic and constrained case. Nevertheless interesting analytical properties (e.g. about when to stop emissions, implicit conservation due to monopolistic supply) are derived and complemented by a numerical example.