IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeeman/v63y2012i1p120-136.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unintended consequences of price controls: An application to allowance markets

Author

Listed:
  • Stocking, Andrew

Abstract

Price controls established in a cap-and-trade allowance market are intended to reduce cost uncertainty by constraining allowance prices between a ceiling and floor; however, they could provide opportunities for strategic actions by firms that would lower government revenue and increase emissions. In particular, when the ceiling price is supported by introducing new allowances into the market, firms could choose to buy allowances at the ceiling price, regardless of the prevailing market price, in order to lower the equilibrium price of all allowances. Those purchases could either be transacted by firms intending to manipulate the market price or be induced through the introduction of inaccurate information about the cost of emissions abatement. Theory and simulations using allowance elasticity estimates for U.S. firms suggest that the manipulation could be profitable under the stylized setting and assumptions evaluated in the paper, although in practice many other conditions will determine its use.

Suggested Citation

  • Stocking, Andrew, 2012. "Unintended consequences of price controls: An application to allowance markets," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 120-136.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:63:y:2012:i:1:p:120-136
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2011.07.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069611001173
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jeem.2011.07.005?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Lasky, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Reducing Emissions of Greenhouse Gases: A Survey of Economic Models: Technical Paper 2003-03," Working Papers 14414, Congressional Budget Office.
    2. Robert W. Hahn, 1984. "Market Power and Transferable Property Rights," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(4), pages 753-765.
    3. Cramton, Peter & Schwartz, Jesse A, 2000. "Collusive Bidding: Lessons from the FCC Spectrum Auctions," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 229-252, May.
    4. Matti Liski & Juan‐Pablo Montero, 2011. "Market Power in an Exhaustible Resource Market: The Case of Storable Pollution Permits," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 116-144, March.
    5. Fell, Harrison & Burtraw, Dallas & Morgenstern, Richard D. & Palmer, Karen L., 2012. "Soft and hard price collars in a cap-and-trade system: A comparative analysis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 183-198.
    6. James B. Bushnell & Howard Chong & Erin T. Mansur, 2009. "Profiting from Regulation: An Event Study of the EU Carbon Market," NBER Working Papers 15572, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Zhao, Jinhua, 2003. "Irreversible abatement investment under cost uncertainties: tradable emission permits and emissions charges," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(12), pages 2765-2789, December.
    8. Harrison Fell & Dallas Burtraw & Richard Morgenstern & Karen Palmer, 2012. "Climate Policy Design with Correlated Uncertainties in Offset Supply and Abatement Cost," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 88(3), pages 589-611.
    9. Christopher R. Knittel & Victor Stango, 2003. "Price Ceilings as Focal Points for Tacit Collusion: Evidence from Credit Cards," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1703-1729, December.
    10. Dale W. Henderson & Stephen W. Salant, 1976. "Market anticipations, government policy, and the price of gold," International Finance Discussion Papers 81, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Harrison Fell & Richard Morgenstern, 2010. "Alternative Approaches to Cost Containment in a Cap-and-Trade System," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 47(2), pages 275-297, October.
    12. Congressional Budget Office, 2010. "Managing Allowance Prices in a Cap-and-Trade Program," Reports 21834, Congressional Budget Office.
    13. Juan-Pablo Montero, 2009. "Market Power in Pollution Permit Markets," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Special I).
    14. Christophe Chamley, 2003. "Dynamic Speculative Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 603-621, June.
    15. Isaac, R Mark & Plott, Charles R, 1981. "Price Controls and the Behavior of Auction Markets: An Experimental Examination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 448-459, June.
    16. Smith, Vernon L & Williams, Arlington W, 1981. "On Nonbinding Price Controls in a Competitive Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 467-474, June.
    17. Stavins, Robert N., 2008. "A Meaningful U.S. Cap-and-Trade System to Address Climate Change," Climate Change Modelling and Policy Working Papers 44469, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    18. Anderson, Ronald W & Gilbert, Christopher L, 1988. "Commodity Agreements and Commodity Markets: Lessons from Tin," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(389), pages 1-15, March.
    19. Carrera, Jose M., 1999. "Speculative attacks to currency target zones: A market microstructure approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 6(5), pages 555-582, December.
    20. Cramton Peter & Schwartz Jesse A, 2002. "Collusive Bidding in the FCC Spectrum Auctions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-20, December.
    21. Hammoudeh, Shawkat & Madan, Vibhas, 1995. "Expectations, target zones, and oil price dynamics," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 597-613, December.
    22. Salant, Stephen W, 1983. "The Vulnerability of Price Stabilization Schemes to Speculative Attack," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-38, February.
    23. Salant, Stephen W & Henderson, Dale W, 1978. "Market Anticipations of Government Policies and the Price of Gold," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(4), pages 627-648, August.
    24. Paul R. Krugman, 1991. "Target Zones and Exchange Rate Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(3), pages 669-682.
    25. Matti Liski & Juan-Pablo Montero, 2006. "On Pollution Permit Banking and Market Power," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 283-302, May.
    26. Congressional Budget Office, 2010. "Managing Allowance Prices in a Cap-and-Trade Program," Reports 21834, Congressional Budget Office.
    27. 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.
    28. Dinan, Terry M., 2009. "Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions With a Tax or a Cap: Implications for Efficiency and Cost Effectiveness," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 62(3), pages 535-553, September.
    29. Hans H. Helbling & James E. Turley, 1975. "Oil price controls: a counterproductive effort," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 57(Nov), pages 2-6.
    30. Pirrong, Stephen Craig, 1993. "Manipulation of the Commodity Futures Market Delivery Process," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(3), pages 335-369, July.
    31. Cédric Philibert, 2009. "Assessing the value of price caps and floors," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(6), pages 612-633, November.
    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. Yu, Jongmin & Mallory, Mindy L., 2015. "An optimal hybrid emission control system in a multiple compliance period model," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 16-28.
    2. Quemin, Simon & Trotignon, Raphaël, 2021. "Emissions trading with rolling horizons," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    3. Dormady, Noah & Healy, Paul J., 2019. "The consignment mechanism in carbon markets: A laboratory investigation," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 51-65.
    4. Thomas D. Jeitschko & Pallavi Pal, 2021. "Curbing Price Fluctuations in Cap-and-Trade Auctions," CESifo Working Paper Series 9266, CESifo.
    5. Shobe, William & Holt, Charles & Huetteman, Thaddeus, 2014. "Elements of emission market design: An experimental analysis of California's market for greenhouse gas allowances," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 402-420.
    6. Holland, Stephen P. & Yates, Andrew J., 2015. "Optimal trading ratios for pollution permit markets," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 16-27.
    7. Khezr, Peyman & MacKenzie, Ian A., 2018. "Permit market auctions with allowance reserves," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 283-306.
    8. Jay S. Coggins & Andrew L. Goodkind & Jason Nguyen & Zhiyu Wang, 2019. "Price Effects, Inefficient Environmental Policy, and Windfall Profits," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(3), pages 637-656, March.
    9. Hasegawa, Makoto & Salant, Stephen, 2014. "Cap-and-trade programs under delayed compliance: Consequences of interim injections of permits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 24-34.
    10. Fell, Harrison & Burtraw, Dallas & Morgenstern, Richard D. & Palmer, Karen L., 2012. "Soft and hard price collars in a cap-and-trade system: A comparative analysis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 183-198.
    11. Lawrence H. Goulder & Andrew Schein, 2013. "Carbon Taxes vs. Cap and Trade: A Critical Review," NBER Working Papers 19338, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Timothy N. Cason & John K. Stranlund & Frans P. de Vries, 2022. "Investment Incentives in Tradable Emissions Markets with Price Floors Approach," Purdue University Economics Working Papers 1331, Purdue University, Department of Economics.
    2. Salant, Stephen & Shobe, William & Uler, Neslihan, 2023. "The effects of seemingly nonbinding price floors: An experimental analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    3. Stranlund, John K. & Murphy, James J. & Spraggon, John M., 2014. "Price controls and banking in emissions trading: An experimental evaluation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 71-86.
    4. Lintunen, Jussi & Kuusela, Olli-Pekka, 2018. "Business cycles and emission trading with banking," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 397-417.
    5. Hasegawa, Makoto & Salant, Stephen, 2014. "Cap-and-trade programs under delayed compliance: Consequences of interim injections of permits," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 24-34.
    6. Hasegawa, Makoto & Salant, Stephen, 2012. "Cap-and-Trade Programs under Delayed Compliance," RFF Working Paper Series dp-12-32, Resources for the Future.
    7. Dickson, Alex & MacKenzie, Ian A., 2018. "Strategic trade in pollution permits," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 94-113.
    8. Beat Hintermann, 2017. "Market Power in Emission Permit Markets: Theory and Evidence from the EU ETS," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 66(1), pages 89-112, January.
    9. Shobe, William & Holt, Charles & Huetteman, Thaddeus, 2014. "Elements of emission market design: An experimental analysis of California's market for greenhouse gas allowances," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 402-420.
    10. Piersanti, Giovanni, 2012. "The Macroeconomic Theory of Exchange Rate Crises," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653126.
    11. John Stranlund, 2015. "A Note on Correlated Uncertainty and Hybrid Environmental Policies," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 61(4), pages 463-476, August.
    12. Friesen, Lana & Gangadharan, Lata & Khezr, Peyman & MacKenzie, Ian A., 2022. "Mind your Ps and Qs! Variable allowance supply in the US Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    13. David F. Perkis & Timothy N. Cason & Wallace E. Tyner, 2016. "An Experimental Investigation of Hard and Soft Price Ceilings in Emissions Permit Markets," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 63(4), pages 703-718, April.
    14. Makoto Hasegawa & Stephen Salant, 2015. "The Dynamics of Pollution Permits," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 61-79, October.
    15. Chen, Yihsu & Tanaka, Makoto, 2018. "Permit banking in emission trading: Competition, arbitrage and linkage," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 70-82.
    16. Lana Friesen & Lata Gangadharan & Peyman Khezr & Ian A. MacKenzie, 2020. "Mind your Ps and Qs! An Experiment on Variable Allowance Supply in the US Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative," Discussion Papers Series 618, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    17. Ollikka, Kimmo, 2014. "Essays on auction mechanisms and information in regulating pollution," Research Reports 66, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    18. Ollikka, Kimmo, 2014. "Essays on auction mechanisms and information in regulating pollution," Research Reports P66, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Fell, Harrison, 2016. "Comparing policies to confront permit over-allocation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 53-68.
    20. Gaudet, Gerard & Salant, Stephen W., 2003. "The effects of periodic quotas limiting the stock of imports of durables," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 402-419, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Price controls; Carbon; Cap-and-trade; Allowance market; Manipulation; Price ceiling; Elasticity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection

    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:eee:jeeman:v:63:y:2012:i:1:p:120-136. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622870 .

    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.