IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ajarec/v48y2004i1p127-158.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environment, irreversibility and optimal effluent standards

Author

Listed:
  • Jyh‐Bang Jou

Abstract

The present article investigates the use of performance standards to correct environmental externalities. Each firm in an industry emits waste in the production process, and, in turn, the average waste emissions of the industry adversely affect the firm's productivity. The firm, which incurs sunk costs when employing capital to abate waste emissions, is uncertain about the efficiency of capital. The firm will underestimate environmental externalities and will therefore pollute more than is socially efficient. To correct this tendency, the regulator can set a limit on either emissions or the emission‐output ratio at the socially efficient level. The firm will invest more, produce more, and pollute less when the regulator implements the former than when the regulator implements the latter.

Suggested Citation

  • Jyh‐Bang Jou, 2004. "Environment, irreversibility and optimal effluent standards," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 48(1), pages 127-158, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ajarec:v:48:y:2004:i:1:p:127-158
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8489.2004.00235.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8489.2004.00235.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-8489.2004.00235.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dixit, Avinash, 1991. "Irreversible Investment with Price Ceilings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(3), pages 541-557, June.
    2. Kolstad, Charles D., 1996. "Learning and Stock Effects in Environmental Regulation: The Case of Greenhouse Gas Emissions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 1-18, July.
    3. Martin L. Weitzman, 1974. "Prices vs. Quantities," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(4), pages 477-491.
    4. Gaudet, Gerard & Lasserre, Pierre & Van Long, Ngo, 1998. "Real investment decisions under adjustment costs and asymmetric information," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 71-95, September.
    5. Barbera, Anthony J & McConnell, Virginia D, 1986. "Effects of Pollution Control on Industry Productivity: A Factor Demand Approach," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 161-172, December.
    6. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    7. Jung, Chulho & Krutilla, Kerry & Boyd, Roy, 1996. "Incentives for Advanced Pollution Abatement Technology at the Industry Level: An Evaluation of Policy Alternatives," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 95-111, January.
    8. Charles D. Kolstad, 2000. "Spatial Environmental and Resource Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1918.
    9. Pindyck, Robert S, 1988. "Irreversible Investment, Capacity Choice, and the Value of the Firm," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 969-985, December.
    10. Montero, Juan-Pablo, 2002. "Permits, Standards, and Technology Innovation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 23-44, July.
    11. Pindyck, Robert S., 2000. "Irreversibilities and the timing of environmental policy," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 233-259, July.
    12. Dixit Avinash & Rob Rafael, 1994. "Switching Costs and Sectoral Adjustments in General Equilibrium with Uninsured Risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 48-69, February.
    13. Pindyck, Robert S., 2002. "Optimal timing problems in environmental economics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(9-10), pages 1677-1697, August.
    14. Dixit, Avinash K, 1989. "Entry and Exit Decisions under Uncertainty," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 620-638, June.
    15. Mohtadi, Hamid, 1996. "Environment, growth, and optimal policy design," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 119-140, December.
    16. Farzin, Y. H., 1996. "Optimal pricing of environmental and natural resource use with stock externalities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1-2), pages 31-57, October.
    17. repec:bla:jindec:v:46:y:1998:i:2:p:235-56 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Cropper, Maureen L & Oates, Wallace E, 1992. "Environmental Economics: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 675-740, June.
    19. Guiseppe Bertola & Ricardo J. Caballero, 1994. "Irreversibility and Aggregate Investment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(2), pages 223-246.
    20. Dixit, Avinash, 1997. "Investment and Employment Dynamics in the Short Run and the Long Run," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 49(1), pages 1-20, January.
    21. Requate, Till & Unold, Wolfram, 2003. "Environmental policy incentives to adopt advanced abatement technology:: Will the true ranking please stand up?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 125-146, February.
    22. Roberts, Marc J. & Spence, Michael, 1976. "Effluent charges and licenses under uncertainty," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3-4), pages 193-208.
    23. Steven R. Grenadier, 2002. "Option Exercise Games: An Application to the Equilibrium Investment Strategies of Firms," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(3), pages 691-721.
    24. Clark, Colin W & Clarke, Frank H & Munro, Gordon R, 1979. "The Optimal Exploitation of Renewable Resource Stocks: Problems of Irreversible Investment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 25-47, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jyh-Bang Jou, 2014. "Determinants of Efficient Growth Boundaries with Balanced Budgets and Stochastic Rents," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 93-111, March.
    2. Jou, Jyh-Bang & Lee, Tan (Charlene), 2016. "How does statutory redemption affect a buyer's decision at the foreclosure sale?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 263-272.
    3. Lee, Tan & Jou, Jyh-Bang, 2007. "The regulation of optimal development density," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 21-36, March.
    4. Jyh-Bang Jou & Tan Lee, 2008. "Taxation on Land Value and Development When There Are Negative Externalities from Development," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 103-120, January.
    5. Jyh-Bang Jou & Charlene Tan Lee, 2019. "Optimal statute of limitations under land development timing decisions," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 62(1), pages 1-20, February.
    6. Zhen Zhang & Joshua Hinger & David Audretsch & Guojun Song, 2015. "Environmental technology transfer and emission standards for industry in China," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 40(5), pages 743-759, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jou, Jyh-Bang, 2004. "Environment, irreversibility and optimal effluent standards," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 48(1), pages 1-32.
    2. Jyh-Bang Jou, 2001. "Environment, Asset Characteristics, and Optimal Effluent Fees," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 20(1), pages 27-39, September.
    3. Dagmar Nelissen & Till Requate, 2007. "Pollution-reducing and resource-saving technological progress," International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(1), pages 5-44.
    4. Robert S. Pindyck, 2006. "Uncertainty In Environmental Economics," NBER Working Papers 12752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Requate, Till, 2005. "Environmental Policy under Imperfect Competition: A Survey," Economics Working Papers 2005-12, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    6. Abel, Andrew B. & Eberly, Janice C., 1999. "The effects of irreversibility and uncertainty on capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 339-377, December.
    7. Corato, Luca Di & Maoz, Yishay D., 2023. "Externality control and endogenous market structure under uncertainty: The price vs. quantity dilemma," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    8. Zeng, Bingxin & Zhu, Lei & Yao, Xing, 2020. "Policy choice for end-of-pipe abatement technology adoption under technological uncertainty," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 121-130.
    9. Jyh‐Bang Jou & Tan (Charlene) Lee, 2021. "Uncertainty, hiring and firing costs, and the determinants of profit‐sharing rules," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(1), pages 185-197, January.
    10. van Soest, Daan P., 2005. "The impact of environmental policy instruments on the timing of adoption of energy-saving technologies," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 235-247, October.
    11. Requate, Till, 2005. "Dynamic incentives by environmental policy instruments--a survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2-3), pages 175-195, August.
    12. Wang, Tan, 2001. "Equilibrium with new investment opportunities," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(11), pages 1751-1773, November.
    13. Kolstad, Charles D. & Toman, Michael, 2005. "The Economics of Climate Policy," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 30, pages 1561-1618, Elsevier.
    14. Luis H. R. Alvarez & Erkki Koskela, 2002. "Irreversible Investment under Interest Rate Variability: New Results," CESifo Working Paper Series 640, CESifo.
    15. Wirl, Franz, 2006. "Consequences of irreversibilities on optimal intertemporal CO2 emission policies under uncertainty," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 105-123, May.
    16. Agliardi, Elettra & Sereno, Luigi, 2012. "Environmental protection, public finance requirements and the timing of emission reductions," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(6), pages 715-739, December.
    17. Caballero, Ricardo J., 1999. "Aggregate investment," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 813-862, Elsevier.
    18. Di Corato, Luca & Moretto, Michele & Vergalli, Sergio, 2014. "Long-run investment under uncertain demand," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 80-89.
    19. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2002. "Patents, Real Options and Firm Performance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 97-116, March.
    20. Miquel Faig, 1997. "INVESTMENT IRREVERSIBILITY IN GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM: Capital Accumulation, Interest Rates, and the Risk Premium," Working Papers faig-97-01, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ajarec:v:48:y:2004:i:1:p:127-158. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaresea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.