Environmental regulators often have imperfect information about regulated firms’ abatement costs. In this paper we compare taxes and emissions permits in a dynamic setting in which firms behave strategically. The regulator updates policy over time based upon previous aggregate industry performance, assuming that firms are not strategic. We find that strategic firms facing an emissions tax have ...

The use of emissions trading (cap and trade) is gaining worldwide recognition as an extremely effective policy tool. The U.S. Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) Emissions Trading Program has achieved an unprecedented level of environmental protection in a cost-effective manner. The successful results of the program have led domestic and foreign governments to consider the application of cap and trade to addr...

Eastern China has experienced severe and persistent winter haze episodes in recent years due to intensification of aerosol pollution. In addition to anthropogenic emissions, the winter aerosol pollution over eastern China is associated with unusual meteorological conditions, including weaker wind speeds. Here we show, based on model simulations, that during years with decreased wind speed, larg...

The establishment of new environmental regulation, such as emissions taxes and tradable pollution permit markets, create rents that can be captured through a process of socially wasteful rent seeking. In this paper, we create a framework that compares social welfare under alternative market-based environmental policy instruments when agents lobby for the contestable rent. We show revenue raisin...

During the past 30 year of economic growth, China has also accumulated a huge environmental pollution debt. China’s government attempts to use a variety of means, including tax instruments to control environmental pollution. After nine years of repeated debates, the State Council Legislative Affairs Office released the Environmental Protection Tax Law (Draft) in June 2015. As China’s first envi...

Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Center Animal agriculture contributes about three percent of all anthropogenic (humancaused) greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. (EPA, 2011). Although this is small relative to other economic sectors such as transportation and energy, animal agriculture is also being called upon to defend its environmental impact and continually demonstrate its comm...

global warming is one of the major concerns in environmental issues. its effects are being exposed faster than anticipated recently. it causes adverse ecological and socioeconomical effects. the 4th assessment report issued by the u. n.’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) states that it is appropriate to define global warming was caused by greenhouse gases due to human activities...

Using Environmental Kuznets Curve theory, this article examines the EKC effect of economic growth, energy intensity and carbon emission intensity on total quantity of carbon emission under the constraint of energy-saving policy. Optimizing energy-consuming structure and decreasing energy-consuming intensity can incline carbon emissions intensity and slow down the increasing speed of carbon emis...

Many developing countries are mixed economies in which public and private firms engage in Cournot competition. We show that some fundamental results in environmental economics fail to hold in these economies: more stringent environmental regulation does not necessarily reduce pollution levels, the equivalence between environmental taxes and standards breaks down, and not every emission level ca...