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Taxes versus permits as incentive for the intertemporal supply of a clean technology by a monopoly

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  • Wirl, Franz

Abstract

This paper investigates the intertemporal monopolistic supply of a clean technology and addresses the following questions: How does the lack of governments to commit restrict the incentives and thereby the supply of clean technologies? Are either emission taxes or emission permits better suited in such a dynamic setting? Although the monopoly can be forced to price taking behaviour, the inability of governments to commit leads to too slow and to too little expansion. Prices and quantities are equivalent for different kinds of government's objectives. An (important) exception is the case of non-competitive supply of the dirty input: taxes dominate from a welfare perspective however due to the additional scope to accrue rents and not due to an improvement of incentives for the development of clean technologies. Permits eliminate pollution entirely, which fosters the expansion of the clean technology.

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  • Wirl, Franz, 2014. "Taxes versus permits as incentive for the intertemporal supply of a clean technology by a monopoly," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 248-269.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:resene:v:36:y:2014:i:1:p:248-269
    DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2013.05.005
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    Cited by:

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    2. Hao Xu & Ming Luo, 2022. "Optimal Environmental Policy in a Dynamic Transboundary Pollution Game: Emission Standards, Taxes, and Permit Trading," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-25, July.
    3. Markus Eigruber & Franz Wirl, 2018. "Climate Engineering in an Interconnected World: The Role of Tariffs," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 573-587, September.
    4. Martín-Herrán, Guiomar & Rubio, Santiago J., 2016. "The Strategic Use of Abatement by a Polluting Monopoly," ETA: Economic Theory and Applications 244532, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    5. García, Arturo & Leal, Mariel & Lee, Sang-Ho, 2018. "Time-inconsistent environmental policies with a consumer-friendly firm: Tradable permits versus emission tax," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 523-537.
    6. Du, Weijian & Li, Mengjie & Wang, Faming, 2020. "Role of rent-seeking or technological progress in maintaining the monopoly power of energy enterprises: An empirical analysis based on micro-data from China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    7. Martín-Herrán, Guiomar & Rubio, Santiago J., 2021. "On coincidence of feedback and global Stackelberg equilibria in a class of differential games," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 293(2), pages 761-772.
    8. Huan Zhang & Xinxin Xu & Wei Liu & Zhiyou Jia, 2020. "Green supply chain decision modeling under financial policy, with or without uniform government emission reduction policy," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(6), pages 1040-1056, September.
    9. Guiomar Martín-Herrán & Santiago J. Rubio, 2016. "The Strategic Use of Abatement by a Polluting Monopoly," Working Papers 2016.58, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    10. Marie-Laure Cabon-Dhersin & Natacha Raffin, 2023. "Cooperation in Green R&D and Environmental Policies: Taxes or Standards," Working Papers hal-03610541, HAL.
    11. Yi, Yongxi & Xu, Rongwei & Zhang, Sheng, 2019. "A differential game of R&D investment for pollution abatement in different market structures," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 524(C), pages 587-600.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Lack of commitment; Taxes versus permits; External costs; Non-competitive supply; Dynamic game;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

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