The impact of informational costs in quantity regulation of pollutants. The case of the European Emissions Trading Scheme
Abstract
There is extreme heterogeneity of firms regulated under the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in terms of emissions evels and employed technology. We present a model that shows that behavior of firms under quantity regulation can differ strongly, dependent on the characteristics of the firms when the assumption of full information is relaxed. If there are informational costs with regard to abatement options and costs, relatively small emitters and emitters with relatively complex technology will face a threshold for evaluating abatement options and costs. We compare the EU ETS to the US SO2 trading scheme and show that 'adjoining' markets to quantity regulation, supplying goods (i.e. abatement technology) or services (i.e. assistance in permit trading), play a crucial role to reduce transactions costs. Given high complexity of technology and/or strongly limited demand for certain technologies, markets will fail to provide appropriate assistance, generating efficiency losses. The presence of technological complexity and heterogeneous firms can have major consequences for the design of environmental regulation, when considering transaction costs. --Download Info
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Paper provided by ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research in its series ZEW Discussion Papers with number 11-040.Length:
Date of creation: 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:11040
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Related research
Keywords: Quantity Regulation; Transaction Costs; Technological Complexity; Induced Technological Change; Emissions Trading;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
- L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
- O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change; Research and Development; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
References
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Heindl, Peter & Löschel, Andreas, 2012. "Designing emissions trading in practice general considerations and experiences from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS)," ZEW Discussion Papers 12-009, ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research.
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