Environmental Policy and Market Structure: A Case of Asymmetric Firms (original) (raw)
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We examine the impact of abatement taxes on the pollution level in a duopoly framework with endogenous market structure. We demonstrate that an increase in abatement taxes could trigger a regime-switch from joint ventures to Cournot competition, causing the pollution level to increase. Moreover, abatement taxes can implement the first best outcome if and only if the industry is not too polluting. In case it is, the second best level of taxes may or may not equal the optimal tax under either joint venture, or Cournot competition.
Oligopolistic Competition, Asymmetric Trade and Pollution Taxes
Journal of Economics, Management and Trade, 2019
This study develops a partial equilibrium model for asymmetric trade between two heterogeneous companies located in different countries under reciprocal dumping and oligopolistic competition conditions. All governments must implement a series of strategic environmental policies with the objective of maximizing the wellbeing of the country, considering company utility, consumer benefit, government income obtained through the levying of pollution taxes, and the social cost of polluting. It can be determined that, if the disutility of polluting is considerably high, governments should levy taxes on pollution. On the other hand, they could also opt not to tax pollution, provided that there is compliance with certain additional conditions that depend on other related parameters, such as marginal production costs and the scale of the companies' production.
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An extended n-firm oligopoly with product differentiation is considered. It is assumed that the government selects an emission standard for the industry and based on the output and technology of each firm it selects a maximum allowed amount of emission for each firm. If the actual amount is higher than the allowed maximum, then the firm has to pay a constant multiple of the excess to the government; otherwise it is rewarded similarly based on the saved emission amount. The existence of the unique interior equilibrium is first proved, and then the effect of the level of penalty or reward and that of the emission standard on the industry output and therefore on the total emission level is also examined. Time delay is introduced into the penalties the firms have to pay and into the rewards the firms receive. In analyzing the stability of the equilibrium both discrete and continuous time scales are considered. For mathematical simplicity the case of symmetric firms is analyzed. In the d...
The timing of environmental policy in a duopolistic market
Economia Agraria y Recursos Naturales, 2015
In this paper the strategic use of innovation by two polluting firms to influence environmental policy is evaluated. The analysis is carried out by comparing two alternative policy regimes for two policy instruments: Taxes and standards. The first of the regimes assumes that the regulator commits to an ex-ante level of the policy instrument. In the second one, there is no commitment. The results show that when there is no commitment and a tax is used to control emissions, the strategic behavior of firms can be welfare improving if the efficiency of the clean technology is relatively low. If this is not the case, the strategic behavior of the duopolists has a detrimental effect on welfare regardless of the policy instrument used to control emissions.
Environmental Policy Under Imperfect Competition
The International Yearbook of Environmental and Resource Economics 2006/2007, 2006
In this article I survey the theoretical literature on environmental policy in the presence of imperfect competition, ranging from early contributions in the 1960s to the present. I cover the following market structures when polluting firms have market power in the output market: monopoly, Cournot oligopoly, Bertrand duopoly with homogeneous products, pricesetting duopoly with differentiating commodities, and models of monopolistic competition. Among the latter I consider Cournot oligopoly with free entry, the Dixit-Stiglitz model, and Salop's model of the circular city with polluting firms. The regulation instruments I concentrate on are emission taxes, tradable permits, and both absolute and relative standards. I also discuss taxation when firms have market power in the input market, and I study models where firms exercise market power in the market of tradable permits. In the latter case I also survey some recent results from the literature on experimental economics. Finally, I briefly discuss environmental policy in open economies when firms have market power in international markets. Here I suggest different decompositions of the unilateral second-best optimal tax rate, thus attempting to unify alternative interpretations of these decompositions in the literature.
Mergers, pollution and environmental policy
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2006
We examine the impact of abatement taxes on the pollution level in a duopoly framework with endogenous market structure. We demonstrate that an increase in abatement taxes could trigger a regime-switch from Cournot competition to merger, as well as from merger to Cournot competition. The nature of this switch is critically dependent on the nature of merger costs. However, in either case, this may cause the pollution level to increase.