Carbon Leakage, the Green Paradox and Perfect Future Markets

Policies of lowering carbon demand may aggravate rather than alleviate climate change (green paradox). In a two-period three-country general equilibrium model with finite endowment of fossil fuel one country enforces an emissions cap in the first or second period. When that cap is tightened the extent of carbon leakage depends on the interaction of various parameters and elasticities. Conditions for the green paradox are specified. All determinants of carbon leakage resulting from tightening the first-period cap work in opposite direction when the second-period cap is tightened. Tightening the second-period cap does not necessarily lead to the green paradox.carbon leakage, green paradox, emissions cap

Asymmetric Capital-Tax Competition, Unemployment and Losses from Capital Market Integration

In a multi-country general equilibrium economy with mobile capital and rigid-wage unemployment, countries may differ in capital endowments, production technologies and rigid wages. Governments tax capital at the source to maximize national welfare. They account for tax base responses to their tax and take as given the world-market interest rate. We specify conditions under which - in contrast to free trade with undistorted labor markets - welfare declines and unemployment increases in some countries (i) when moving from au-tarky to trade without taxation and/or (ii) when moving from trade without taxation to tax competition.capital taxation, asymmetric tax competition, rigid wages, unemployment, losses from trade

Nonlinear Production, Abatement, Pollution and Materials Balance Reconsidered

In the environmental economics literature the standard approach of modeling nonlinear production and abatement processes is to treat waste emissions "simply as another factor of production" (Cropper and Oates 1992). That approach doesn't map the materials flow involved completely and hides, moreover, the exact links between production, residuals generation and abatement. This paper shows that production functions with emissions treated as inputs can be reconstructed as a subsystem of a comprehensive production-cum-abatement technology that is in line with the materials-balance principle. In a simple economy with full regard of the materials flow it also explores the consequences for allocative efficiency and efficiency-restoring taxation of multiple and interdependent residuals generated in the transformation processes of production, abatement and consumption. Finally, the paper demonstrates that efficiency may require setting the emissions tax rate above or below conventionally defined marginal abatement cost if the residual subject to abatement is not the only residual causing pollution.residuals, abatement, pollution, materials balance

Efficient CO2 Emissions Control with National Emissions Taxes and International Emissions Trading

In a group of countries like the European Union all countries seek to achieve their national CO2 emissions target by a joint emissions trading scheme covering some part of their economies (trading sector) and by a national emissions tax in the rest of their economies (nontrading sector). Applicable are also emissions taxes overlapping with the trading scheme that can either be freely chosen or are inert. Welfare-maximizing governments determine tax rates and the tradable-permits budget. It is shown that efficiency requires not to levy overlapping emissions taxes and to set the tax rate in the nontrading sector equal to the permit price. In the small-country case emissions control turns out to be efficient if tax rates in the trading sector are flexible. Otherwise it is second-best to violate cost effectiveness and to choose an excessive endowment of tradable permits. If countries are large and optimal tariffs cannot be applied, emissions taxes or subsidies (!) are shown to serve as a perfect surrogate; efficiency cannot be attained unless there is a central authority mandating cost effectiveness and banning overlapping taxes. Fiscal externalities are specified and the countries’ welfare in the large and small country case is compared.emissions taxes, emissions trading, international trade

Flattening the Carbon Extraction Path in Unilateral Cost-Effective Action

Internalizing the global negative externality of carbon emissions requires flattening the extraction path of world fossil energy resources (= world carbon emissions). We consider governments having sign-unconstrained emission taxes at their disposal and seeking to prevent world emissions from exceeding some binding aggregate emission ceiling in the medium term. Such a ceiling policy can be carried out either in full cooperation of all (major) carbon emitting countries or by a sub-global climate coalition. Unilateral action has to cope with carbon leakage and high costs which makes a strong case for choosing a policy that implements the ceiling in a cost-effective way. In a two-country two-period general equilibrium model with a non-renewable fossil-energy resource we characterize the unilateral cost-effective ceiling policy and compare it with its fully cooperative counterpart. We show that with full cooperation there exists a cost-effective ceiling policy in which only first-period emissions are taxed at a rate that is uniform across countries. In contrast, the cost-effective ceiling policy of a sub-global climate coalition is characterized by emission regulation in both periods. That policy may consist either of positive tax rates in both periods or of negative tax rates (= subsidies) in both periods or of a positive rate in the first and a negative rate in the second period. The share of the total stock of energy resources owned by the sub-global climate coalition turns out to be a decisive determinant of the sign and magnitude of unilateral cost-effective taxes.unilateral climate policy, intertemporal climate policy, non-renewable energy resources, emission taxes

Asymmetric capital-tax competition, unemployment and losses from capital market integration

In a multi-country general equilibrium economy with mobile capital and rigid-wage unemployment, countries may differ in capital endowments, production technologies and rigid wages. Governments tax capital at the source to maximize national welfare. They account for tax base responses to their tax and take as given the world-market interest rate. We specify conditions under which - in contrast to free trade with undistorted labor markets - welfare declines and unemployment increases in some countries (i) when moving from autarky to trade without taxation and/or (ii) when moving from trade without taxation to tax competition.capital taxation, asymmetric tax competition, rigid wages, unemployment, losses from trade

Corrective Taxation for Curbing Pollution and Promoting Green Product Design and Recycling

In this paper we consider a competitive economy with flows of materials from extraction via recycling to landfilling which exhibits distortions due to pollution, external landfilling costs and inefficient product design. The allocative impact of tax-subsidy policies aiming at internalizing the distortions are analyzed when the pertinent tax-subsidy rates were successively raised from zero toward their efficiency restoring levels. Promoting recyclability by greening the product design stimulates recycling as expected. But it also increases primary material extraction and - possibly - the total waste flow, and it reduces the recycling ratio.Green design, pollution, recycling, material

Competitive trilateral lobbying for and against subsidizing green energy

A small open economy operates a carbon emission trading scheme and subsidizes green energy. Taking cap-and-trade as given, we seek to explain the subsidy as the outcome of a trilateral tug of war between the green energy industry, the black energy industry and consumers. With parametric functions we fully solve the competitive economic equilibrium and the lobbying Nash equilibrium. We show how the resultant subsidy depends on the political influence of all three lobbying groups and we trace its determinants. Whether consumers have green preferences turns out to be crucial for the results

Optimal Pest Control in Agriculture

Based on economic methodology we model an ecosystem with two species in predator-prey relationship: mice feed on grain and grain feeds on a resource. With optimizing behaviour of individual organisms a short-run ecosystem equilibrium is defined and characterized that depends on the farmer’s use of fertilizer and on the mice population which, in turn, is affected by pesticides. In that way, a microfounded agricultural production function is derived. Linking a sequence of short-run ecosystem equilibria yields the growth function of the mice population which is thus derived rather than assumed. In each period the farmer harvests all grain in excess of some given amount of seed. If she maximizes her present-value profits, optimal farming is shown to depend on the prices of pesticide and grain. It is either optimal to use no pesticide or a moderate amount of pesticide or to apply a chattering control. Pest eradication is never optimal. On the other hand, if the farmer takes into account steady state mice populations only, it may be optimal to eradicate mice or to use no or a moderate amount of pesticide depending on prices as well as on the shape of the grain production function which is determined by micro parameters of grain reproduction.pesticides, agriculture, predator-prey, chattering pest control

Efficient Management of Insecure Fossil Fuel Imports through Taxing (!) Domestic Green Energy?

A small open economy produces a consumer good, green and black energy, and imports fossil fuel at an uncertain price. Unregulated competitive markets are shown to be inefficient. The implied market failures are due to the agents’ attitudes toward risk, to risk shifting and the uniform price for both types of energy. Under the plausible assumptions that consumers are prudent and at least as risk averse as the producers of black energy, the risk can be efficiently managed by taxing emissions and green energy. The need to tax (!) green energy contradicts the widespread view that subsidization of green energy is an appropriate means to enhance energy security in countries depending on risky fossil fuel imports.price uncertainty, black energy, green energy, fossil fuel