Environmental Policy and Market Structure

Environmental Policy and Market Structure
Author: Carlo Carraro
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 940158642X

One of the central tenets of this book is that governmental policies must be designed to take into account market characteristics and environmental phenomena - simultaneously. This volume contains a new research effort of the `Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei' and explores the theoretical underpinnings of environmental policy in a sub-optimal world. Topics considered link economic issues (oligopolistic market structures, firm heterogeneity, and the strategic behavior of governments) to environmental issues (emission abatements, cleaner technologies, and environmental taxation). The articles in this volume were chosen to achieve a balance between breadth and depth and were written by leading experts in the field. In short, this book is rich in policy implications and raises new issues and questions for future research.

Environmental Policy and Endogenous Market Structure

Environmental Policy and Endogenous Market Structure
Author: Barbara Annicchiarico
Publisher:
Total Pages: 49
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper presents a simple dynamic general equilibrium model with supply-side strategic interactions to study the economic effects of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in an economy with an emission cap and oligopolistic firms competing on prices. With such endogenous market structure a gradual decarbonization policy is likely to induce higher markups, while the number of active firms displays a U-shaped behavior, first decreasing and then increasing. In the long run more firms are active, but they transfer a part of the compliance cost to households by charging a higher markup. The negative effects on the level of economic activity of this anti-competitive outcome are strongly mitigated by recycling policies.

Environmental Policy when Market Structure and Plant Locations are Endogenous

Environmental Policy when Market Structure and Plant Locations are Endogenous
Author: James R. Markusen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 46
Release: 1991
Genre: Environmental policy
ISBN:

A two-region, two-firm model is developed in which firms choose the number and the regional locations of their plants. Both firms pollute and, in this context, market structure is endogenous to environmental policy. There are increasing returns at the plant level, imperfect competition between the "home" and the "foreign" firm, and transport costs between the two markets. These features imply that at critical levels of environmental policy variables, small policy changes cause large discrete jumps in a region's pollution and welfare as a firm closes or opens a plant, or shifts production for the foreign region from/to the home-region plant to/from a foreign branch plant. The implications for optimal environmental policy differ significantly from those suggested by traditional Pigouvian marginal analysis

Environmental Regulation and Market Power

Environmental Regulation and Market Power
Author: Emmanuel Petrakis
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Emissions taxes, tradeable emission permits and voluntary compliance policies are becoming the instruments of choice in controlling environmental problems at the national and international level. This text uses research in order to appraise their efficiency in varying market conditions.

Strategic Environmental Policy Under Free Entry of Firms

Strategic Environmental Policy Under Free Entry of Firms
Author: Thorsten Upmann
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre:
ISBN:

With direct trade barriers banned, governments may be tempted to use indirect policy tools to interfere with trade, such as environmental taxes. The author uses a model of an endogenous market structure, where the number of firms is determined by a zero-profit condition in one country but is exogenously given in the other country, to show that a government harboring a fixed number of firms fails to affect aggregate supply, and therefore has little scope for improving domestic environmental quality (if pollution is transboundary). Moreover, owing to the absence of a terms-of-trade effect, it diverts from the classical strategic tax rule. The author argues that both governments arguably fix their equilibrium emission taxes "too low," meaning that tax competition plausibly leads to "ecological dumping."

Oligopoly, the Environment and Natural Resources

Oligopoly, the Environment and Natural Resources
Author: Luca Lambertini
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2013-08-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134613555

Industrial production and consumption patterns rely heavily on the intensive use of both renewable and non-renewable resources and the consequences for the environment can be serious. Following a long period of time where the profit incentives of firms have prevailed over preservation of the environment and the world’s natural resources, a new consensus has emerged concerning the need to regulate firm behaviour, aimed at ensuring the sustainability of the economic system in the long run. This book offers an exhaustive overview of current economic debate about these topics, taking modern oligopoly theory as a benchmark. The first part of the book covers static models dealing with incentives for green research and development, Pigovian taxation, cartels, environmental quality and international trade, as well as the role of corporate social responsibility, public firms and consumer environmental awareness as endogenous regulatory instruments. Then, the author moves on to examine the role of time while drawing from optimal control and differential game theory. This opens the way to the discussion of fair discount rates to ensure the welfare of future generations, as well as the long run sustainability of production and consumption patterns.