The optimal pricing of pollution when enforcement is costly

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
Year: 2009
Volume: 58
Issue: 2
Pages: 183-191

Score contribution per author:

1.341 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We consider the pricing of a uniformly mixed pollutant with a model of optimal, possibly firm-specific, emissions taxes and their enforcement under incomplete information about firms' abatement costs, enforcement costs, and pollution damage. We argue that optimality requires an enforcement strategy that induces full compliance by every firm, except possibly when a regulator can base the probabilities of detecting individual violations on observable correlates of violators' actual emissions. Moreover, optimality requires discriminatory taxes, except when a regulator is unable to use observable firm-level characteristics to gain some information about the variation in firms' abatement costs or monitoring costs.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:jeeman:v:58:y:2009:i:2:p:183-191
Journal Field
Environment
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-25