Regulation of Stock Externalities with Correlated Abatement Costs

We study a dynamic regulation model where firms’ actions contribute to a stock externality. The regulator and firms have asymmetric information about serially correlated abatement costs. With price-based policies such as taxes, or if firms trade quotas efficiently, the regulator learns about the evolution of both the stock and costs. This ability to learn about costs is important in determining the ranking of taxes and quotas, and in determining the value of a feedback rather than an open-loop policy. For a range of parameter values commonly used in global warming studies, taxes dominate quotas, regardless of whether the regulator uses an open-loop or a feedback policy, and regardless of the extent of cost correlation.Early versions of this paper were presented at the Fifth California Workshop on Environmental and Resource Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, May 5–6, 2000, and at the annual meeting of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, June 1–3, 2000. We thank these conference participants, and two anonymous referees of this journal for their comments, without implicating them in any remaining errors. The opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Asian Development Bank.     

The Environmental Kuznets Curve and Flow versus Stock Pollution: The Neglect of Future Damages

In this paper we offer a possible explanation for the empirical finding that the pollution-income relationship (PIR) for flow pollutants is an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), i.e. inverted-U shaped, but that the PIR for stock pollutants is monotonically rising. We analyse an overlapping generations model with two pollutants: The flow pollutant causes immediate damages, but the stock pollutant harms the environment only in the future. Hence, a succession of myopic governments lets stock pollution grow with income. In contrast, the flow pollutant follows an EKC whose downturn might be caused by the neglect of future damages and by ever rising stock pollution: Without the stock pollutant the PIR for the flow pollutant can increase monotonically. We also show that the turning point of the EKC for the flow pollutant lies at lower levels of income and of flow pollution if stock pollution is high and harmful. This casts doubts on most empirical EKC studies because they assume that the turning point occurs at the same income level in all countries. However, it is consistent with recent empirical findings that the income level at the turning point of the EKC varies across countries.     

Higher Pollution Damage, More Lenient Environmental Policies?

In a standard static setup, optimal environmental taxes are increasing in expected pollution damage. With irreversible investments and new information about environmental damage becoming available over time, we show that this result also holds if damage in the high-damage scenario rises or the probability of high damage increases. However, if damage in the low-damage scenario increases, current environmental taxes should decrease if firms face sufficiently similar abatement costs.     

Environmental Taxes and First-Mover Advantages

This paper studies whether governments prefer to be leaders or followers in environmental policies. To analyze this question I assume transboundary pollution and two countries that have to decide whether to set environmental taxes sequentially or simultaneously. When taxes are set sequentially an effect, denoted as the sequential setting effect, arises that raises the equilibrium taxes. I show that whether governments prefer to be leaders or followers in taxes depends on the degree to which environmental pollution spills over to trading partners. When this overspill is low enough, taxes are strategic complements and both the leader and the follower obtain greater welfare than under a simultaneous tax setting. However, the leader country obtains greater welfare than the follower. In this case, governments set taxes sequentially. When the degree to which environmental pollution spills over to trading partners is high enough, taxes are strategic substitutes and governments set taxes simultaneously. In this case, each government wants to avoid becoming the follower in taxes.     

关于环境污染问题实质的探讨

本文认为环境污染问题不是效率问题，因为它在经济上可能是有效率的，也可能是无效率的；不是代际问题，因为它可导致代际公平，也可能导致代际不公平。环境污染问题实质上是公平问题：当代一部人从中得益，另一部分人从中受害。有效率或无效率的成果常被不公正地分配，代际不公平来源于代内不公平。     

Transboundary Pollution in the Black Sea: Comparison of Institutional Arrangements

This paper analyses the transboundary pollution between Romania and Ukraine, coastal states along the Black Sea, and studies the welfare consequences of institutional arrangements for controlling this problem. To achieve this goal, we use a dynamic and strategic framework. We compare in terms of total welfare for two countries a first-best case with three different institutional arrangements: the non-cooperative game of countries, the uniform emission policy and the constant emission policy as proposed by the Black Sea Commission. Our findings indicate that the non-cooperative game provides a better level of total welfare than the other rules.     

The optimal control of emissions and renewable resource harvesting under uncertainty

A model of a renewable resource is developed where the growth and quality of the resource are reduced by pollution. Ambient pollution concentrations and the renewable resource stock are modeled as stochastic processes. Conditions for the optimal harvest plan and the optimal emissions rate are derived. The effect of stochastic variations on the optimal management of the resource is analyzed. The steady-state joint probability distribution of the resource and pollution stocks is shown to exist under certain conditions.     

遏制中国环境继续恶化的根本思路

改革开放以来,我国经济迅猛的增长势头是令人瞩目的,但在经济社会发展取得巨大成就的同时,环境的日趋恶化不得不引起我们的重视。环境问题的产生有多方面原因,包括制度设立上的缺陷,发展观上对环境资源合理利用的忽视,生产技术落后等因素。近几年来,我国政府加大了对环境保护的重视程度,并采取了相应措施防止环境的进一步恶化。本文也从经济学的角度为经济的可持续发展提出了一些建议。     

论企业对环境污染的自我规制

企业对环境污染的自我规制不仅是出于提升竞争力和应对市场压力的考虑,也与企业社会责任理念的发展与深化密切相关。本文对企业环境自我规制的行为动因及其发展脉络进行了分析。研究表明,需要通过开放市场引入更严格的环境标准或者通过提升消费者等利益相关团体的环境意识来激励我国现阶段企业参与环境保护。     

环境壁垒在处理跨界污染问题中的运用

由于缺乏能够有力约束各国政府的组织存在,而各国仅从自身利益最大化来考虑污染排放,故如何让各国自愿并积极地参与环境保护协议以解决跨界污染一直是环境经济主要研究的问题之一。另外,环境壁垒一直被认为是新贸易保护主义所采取的一种贸易保护政策的新形式,其阻碍了贸易自由化的发展。然而,本文从另一角度重新审视环境壁垒,通过把它引入跨界污染博弈中形成关联博弈,最终得出环境壁垒有助于解决国家间的跨界污染问题的结论。