Environmental policy, technology adoption and the size distribution of firms

A-Tier
Journal: Energy Economics
Year: 2018
Volume: 72
Issue: C
Pages: 470-485

Authors (2)

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

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

Abstract

The potential impacts of strict environmental policies on production costs and firms' competitiviness are central to the choice of which policy to implement. However, not all the industries nor all firms within an industry are affected in the same way. In this paper, we investigate the effects of emission taxes, uniform emission standards, and performance standards on the size distribution of firms. Our results indicate that, unlike emission taxes and performance standards, emission standards introduce regulatory asymmetries favoring small firms. On the contrary, emission taxes and performance standards reduce to a lower extent profits of larger firms but they do modify the optimal scale of firms. We also show that when the regulatory asymmetries created by emissions standards are taken into account, the profitability of emissions reducing technologies is higher under emission standards than under market-based instruments.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:eneeco:v:72:y:2018:i:c:p:470-485
Journal Field
Energy
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-25