Competitive Permit Markets and Vertical Structures: The Relevance of Imperfect Competitive Eco-Industries

Permit markets lead polluting firms to purchase abatement goods from an eco-industry, which is often concentrated. This paper studies the consequences of imperfect competition in an eco-industry on the equilibrium choices of the competitive polluting firms. It then characterizes the second best pollution cap. By comparing this situation to a competitive one, we show that Cournot competition on the abatement good market contributes not only to a non optimal level of emission reduction but also to a higher permit price, which reduces the production level. These distortions increase with market power measured by the margin taken by the non competitive firms and suggest a second best less stringent pollution cappollution permit market, eco-industry, imperfect competition

Toward waste management contracts

This paper deals with the cost of treatment of the ultimate waste, that is waste which cannot, in the absence of recycling opportunities, be reduced by a suitable taxation scheme. We propose a new way to handle this waste based on aWaste Management Contracts (WMC) which largely implicates the households in the cost reduction process. Within a set of feasible, i.e. budget balancing, incentive compatible and acceptable, contracts we characterize the optimal WMC and compare this system to a more standard one based on an Advanced and a Disposal FeeWaste Management, Disposal Fee Policy, Household Effort, Contracts

SHOULD WE REALLOCATE PATENT FEES TO THE UNIVERSITIES ?

: In knowledge economies, patent agencies are often viewed as a relevant instrument of an efficient innovation policy. This paper brings a new support to that idea. We claim that these agencies should play an increasing role in the regulation of the relation between heterogeneous private R&D labs and public fundamental research units, especially concerning the question of the appropriation of free basic research results. Since these two institutions work with opposite institutional arrangements (see Dasgupta and David [9]), we essentially argue that there is, on the one hand, an over-appropriation of these results while, on the other hand, there is also an under-provision of free usable results issued from more fundamental research. We show how a public patent office can restore efficiency.Science and technology; patent agency; innovation policy

Waste management and household effort: toward an enhanced ADF policy

Advanced Disposal Fees (ADF) are rather popular in waste management policies, but they cease any waste reduction effort at the household level. We propose a waved ADF policy which enhances this system by giving to the households the possibility to sign a waste reduction contract in counterpart of a lower fee. These contracts satisfy an incentive, a budget balancing and a participation constraints. For these feasible contracts, we show that this enriched ADF policy is welfare improving and always induces a waste reduction e¤ort.Waste Management, Disposal Fee Policy, Household Effort, Contracts

A drop of rainwater against a drop of groundwater: does rainwater harvesting really allow us to spare Groundwater?

This paper is concerned with groundwater management issues in the presence of rainwater harvesting (RWH). Namely, we propose a two-state model in order to take into account the standard dynamics of the aquifer and the dynamics of the storage capacity since the collected rainwater reduces the natural recharge. We analyze the trade-off between these two water harvesting techniques in an optimal control model. We notably show that, when these techniques are pure substitutes, the development of RWH conducts in the long run to a depletion of the water table even if pumping is reduced.Rainwater Harvesting, Conjunctive Use, Groundwater Optimal Control Management, Dynamic Model

ON THE COORDINATION OF THE EUROPEAN AGRI-ENVIRONMENTAL AND WATER INTERNALIZING POLICIES

The point of departure of this work is the lack of coordination of European environmental internalizing policies. At the national level, while the water authority generally has to internalize the negative externalities of water extraction, the agricultural one aims at encouraging environmentally friendly one. More locally, considering an aquifer as being the only vector of environmental effects, we show that the externalities occurring can compensate themselves in such a way that the open-loop Nash game played by the two distinct authorities in charge of these policies is inefficient. In this special case, we propose to implement a coordinated policy based on a double fiscal scheme also showed budget balanced.water policy; agricultural policy; externalities

Voluntary agreements with Industries - participation incentives with industry-wide targets: a comment

This comment reexamines the problem of free-riding in pre-emptive collective environmental voluntary agreements (VA) analysed by Dawson and Segerson in the context of VAs with a global emission target and a pigouvian tax used as a threat. Completely remaining in the authors' framework, we here reconsider their results about efficiency. While they claim it provides the optimal amount of environmental quality but inefficiently, we show that there exists an optimal threat under which the equilibrium of the game is a cost-effective VA. This result gives an additional indication on the way VAs should be used to be efficient.collective voluntary agreements, pollution control, adoption costs, political processes, distributional effects, diffuse pollution, government policy

Competitive Permit Markets and Vertical Structures: The Relevance of Imperfect Competitive Eco-Industries

Ce Working Paper fait l'objet d'une publication in Journal of Public Economic Theory, Wiley, 2014, 16 (1), pp.69-95. 〈halshs-00926472〉Permit markets lead polluting firms to purchase abatement goods from an eco-industry, which is often concentrated. This paper studies the consequences of imperfect competition in an eco-industry on the equilibrium choices of the competitive polluting firms. It then characterizes the second best pollution cap. By comparing this situation to a competitive one, we show that Cournot competition on the abatement good market contributes not only to a non optimal level of emission reduction but also to a higher permit price, which reduces the production level. These distortions increase with market power measured by the margin taken by the non competitive firms and suggest a second best less stringent pollution ca

Waste management and household effort: toward an enhanced ADF policy

Advanced Disposal Fees (ADF) are rather popular in waste management policies, but they cease any waste reduction effort at the household level. We propose a waved ADF policy which enhances this system by giving to the households the possibility to sign a waste reduction contract in counterpart of a lower fee. These contracts satisfy an incentive, a budget balancing and a participation constraints. For these feasible contracts, we show that this enriched ADF policy is welfare improving and always induces a waste reduction e¤ort

Doit-on réguler l'appropriation des connaissances ?

Nous proposons dans ce travail de considérer le stock de connaissances exploitables par des laboratoires privés à des fins de dépôts de brevets comme un commun dont l'évolution au cours du temps dépend à la fois du nombre de brevets déposés et d'un co-produit des activités de recherche de l'Université. Nous montrons tout d'abord que la compétition entre les laboratoires supposés stratégiques génère, à court terme, une sur-appropriation du stock de connaissances dont l'effet, à long terme, est de réduire les possibilités de dépôts de brevets. Nous montrons ensuite que la taxation des dépôts de brevets constitue un outil efficace de régulation du processus de privatisation des connaissances