Optimal Monitoring to Implement Clean Technologies when Pollution is Random

We analyze a model where firms chose a production technology which, together with some random event, determines the final emission level. We consider the coexistence of two alternative technologies: a “clean” technology, and a “dirty” technology. The environmental regulation is based on taxes over reported emissions, and on penalties over unreported emissions. We show that the optimal inspection policy is a cut-off strategy, for several scenarios concerning the observability of the adoption of the clean technology and the cost of adopting it. We also show that the optimal inspection policy induces the firm to adopt the clean technology if the adoption cost is not too high, but the cost levels for which the firm adopts it depend on the scenario.production technology, random emissions, environmental taxes, optimal monitoring policy

Auditing with Signals

This paper is a first step in the analysis of the use of signals of taxpayer's incomes by tax audit authorities. In a very simple model, we consider the design of the audit strategy when the tax authority can commit to it and has free access to a signal correlated with the taxpayer's true income. We discuss the optimal enforcement policy and compare it with the optimal one when only self-reported income is considered. Our main result is that the well-known regressive bias of revenue-maximizing audit rules may be convert in a progressive one when signals are used.

Optimal Enforcement Policy and Firms’ Emissions and Compliance with Environmental Taxes

In a market where firms with different characteristics decide upon both the level of emissions and their reports, we study the optimal audit policy for an enforcement agency whose objective is to minimize the level of emissions. We show that it is optimal to devote the resources primarily to the easiest-to-monitor firms and to those firms that value pollution the less. Moreover, unless the budget for monitoring is very large, there are always firms that do not comply with the environmental objective and others that do comply; but all of them evade the environmental taxes.environmental taxes, optimal audit policy

Mergers, Investment Decisions and Internal Organisation

We analyse the effects of investment decisions and firms' internal organisation on the efficiency and stability of horizontal mergers. In our framework economies of scale are endogenous and there might be internal conflict within merged firms. We show that often stable mergers do not lead to more efficiency and may even lead to efficiency losses. These mergers lead to lower total welfare, suggesting that a regulator should be careful in assuming that possible efficiency gains of a merger will be effiectively realised. Moreover, the paper offers a possible explanation for merger failures.Horizontal Mergers, Investment, Efficiency gains, Internal Conflict.

Dividends and Weighted Values in Games with Externalities

We consider cooperative environments with externalities (games in partition function form) and provide a recursive definition of dividends for each coalition and any partition of the players it belongs to. We show that with this definition and equal sharing of these dividends the averaged sum of dividends for each player, over all the coalitions that contain the player, coincides with the corresponding average value of the player. We then construct weighted Shapley values by departing from equal division of dividends and finally, for each such value, provide a bidding mechanism implementing it.

Moral Hazard: Base Models and Two Extensions

We analyze the optimal contract in static moral hazard situations, where the agent’s effort is not verifiable. We first present the main trade-offs of the principal-agent model. We cover the trade-off of incentives (motivation) vs. risk-sharing (efficiency), incentives vs. rents (when the agent is protected by limited liability), incentives to a task vs. incentives to another (in a multitask situation), and incentives to the agent vs. incentives to the principal (when both exert a non-verifiable effort). Then, we discuss two recent extensions: how incorporating behavioral biases in the analysis of incentives affects the predictions of the classical moral hazard model, and the insertion of the principal-agent problem in a matching market

Values for Environments with Externalities - The Average Approach

We propose the “average approach,” where the worth of a coalition is a weighted average of its worth for different partitions of the players’ set, as a unifying method to extend values for characteristic function form games. Our method allows us to extend the equal division value, the equal surplus value, the consensus value, the ë-egalitarian Shapley value, and the least-square family. For each of the first three extensions, we also provide an axiomatic characterization of a particular value for partition function form games. And for each of the last two extensions, we find a family of values that satisfy the properties

The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel? Patriotism and Tax Compliance

We study the effects of patriotism on tax compliance. In particular, we assume that individuals feel a (random draw of) warm glow from honestly paying their taxes. A higher expected warm glow reduces the government's optimal audit probability and yields higher tax compliance. Second, individuals with higher warm glow are less likely to evade taxes. This prediction is confirmed empirically by a multivariate analysis on the individual level while controlling for several other potentially confounding factors. The findings survive a variety of robustness checks, including an instrumental variables estimation to tackle the possible endogeneity of patriotism. On the aggregate level, we provide evidence for a negative correlation between average patriotic warm glow and the size of the shadow economy across several countries

Winners and Losers from the Gradual Formation of Trading Blocs

Although global free trade is efficient, each country's benefit from free trade depends on the path that leads to the global free trade agreement. Using a dynamic model of trading bloc formation, we show that when global free trade is reached gradually the countries that are initially excluded gain less than the rest and may be even made worse off by the final free trade agreement than they were in the initial state of no trading blocs. Copyright (c) The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007.