IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v12y1984i2p183-195.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relatively Efficient Pollution Standards Under Perfect Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Jon D. Harford

    (Cleveland State University)

Abstract

The results of this article indicate that pursuit of efficiency with the use of pollution standards cannot be done by mimicking aspects of the efficiency conditions involving pollution taxes. A relatively efficient pollution standard applied to perfectly competitive firms will usually be characterized by a situation in which the marginal cost of pollution control exceeds the marginal damage of pollution, as the latter concept is conventionally measured. Furthermore, it will generally not be relatively efficient to set standards so that the marginal costs of pollution reduction are the same for all polluting firms. A relatively efficient set of standards will depend, in general, on the elasticities of supply and demand of output, as well as the shape and location of the firms' marginal cost ofpollution reduction curves. Some implications of these results for cost-benefit analysis are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Jon D. Harford, 1984. "Relatively Efficient Pollution Standards Under Perfect Competition," Public Finance Review, , vol. 12(2), pages 183-195, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:12:y:1984:i:2:p:183-195
    DOI: 10.1177/109114218401200204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109114218401200204
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/109114218401200204?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. Buchanan, James M & Tullock, Gordon, 1975. "Polluters' Profits and Political Response: Direct Controls Versus Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(1), pages 139-147, March.
    2. Harford, J. & Ogura, S., 1983. "Pollution taxes and standards: A continuum of quasi-optimal solutions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 1-17, March.
    3. Barnett, A H, 1980. "The Pigouvian Tax Rule under Monopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(5), pages 1037-1041, December.
    4. Schulze, William & d'Arge, Ralph C, 1974. "The Coase Proposition, Information Constraints, and Long-Run Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(4), pages 763-772, September.
    5. Cropper, M L, 1981. "Measuring the Benefits from Reduced Morbidity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 235-240, May.
    6. Buchanan, James M, 1969. "External Diseconomies, Corrective Taxes, and Market Structure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 174-177, March.
    7. Randall G. Holcombe & Roger E. Meiners, 1980. "Corrective Taxes and Auctions of Rights in the Control of Externalities," Public Finance Review, , vol. 8(3), pages 345-349, July.
    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. Aaron Hatcher, 2007. "Firm behaviour under pollution ratio standards with non-compliance," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 38(1), pages 89-98, September.

    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. Lambert Schoonbeek & Frans Vries, 2009. "Environmental taxes and industry monopolization," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 94-106, August.
    2. Boyer, M. & Laffont, J.J., 1996. "Toward a Political Theory of Environmental Policy," Cahiers de recherche 9604, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    3. Rauscher, Michael, 2001. "International trade, foreign investment, and the environment," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 29, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics.
    4. Udo Ebert, 1998. "Relative standards: A positive and normative analysis," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 67(1), pages 17-38, February.
    5. Juan Carlos Bárcena‐Ruiz & María Begoña Garzón, 2022. "Environmental policy instruments and ownership of firms," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 90(4), pages 385-408, July.
    6. 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.
    7. Jon D. Harford & Gordon Karp, 1983. "The Effects and Efficiencies of Different Pollution Standards," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 79-89, Apr-Jun.
    8. John R. Boyce & Gregory E. Goering, 1997. "Optimal Taxation of a Polluting Durable Goods Monopolist," Public Finance Review, , vol. 25(5), pages 522-541, September.
    9. Claudia Ranocchia & Luca Lambertini, 2021. "Porter Hypothesis vs Pollution Haven Hypothesis: Can There Be Environmental Policies Getting Two Eggs in One Basket?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 78(1), pages 177-199, January.
    10. Dieter Schmidtchen & Jenny Helstroffer & Christian Koboldt, 2021. "Regulatory failure and the polluter pays principle: why regulatory impact assessment dominates the polluter pays principle," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 23(1), pages 109-144, January.
    11. Mahenc, Philippe & Podesta, Marion, 2012. "The monopolist is not the best environmentalist’s best friend: An example," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 379-382.
    12. Joanna Poyago-Thotoky, 2003. "Optimal Environmental Taxation, R&D Subsidization and the Role of Market Conduct," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 15-26, Spring.
    13. Ana Espinola-Arredondo & Boying Liu, 2014. "The Impact of Environmental Taxes on Firm’s Technology and Entry Decisions," Working Papers 2014-4, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University.
    14. Peter Aranson & Terry Ferrar & Peter Sassone, 1978. "Pigouvian policies in closed behavioral systems," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 5-26, December.
    15. Jihad C. Elnaboulsi, 2015. "Environmental Regulation and Policy Design: The Impact of the Regulator?s Ecological Conscience on the Tax Setting Process," Working Papers 2015-11, CRESE.
    16. Philipp M. Richter & Marco Runkel & Robert C. Schmidt, 2021. "Strategic Environmental Policy and the Mobility of Firms," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(5), pages 863-893.
    17. García-Alaminos, Ángela & Rubio, Santiago J., 2019. "Emission Taxes, Feed-in Subsidies and the Investment in a Clean Technology by a Polluting Monopoly," ES: Economics for Sustainability 291524, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) > ES: Economics for Sustainability.
    18. Xu, Lili & Lee, Sang-Ho, 2018. "The timing of environmental policies with excess burden of taxation in free-entry mixed markets," MPRA Paper 83560, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Heider, Florian & Inderst, Roman, 2021. "A Corporate Finance Perspective on Environmental Policy," EconStor Preprints 253669, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    20. Alfred Endres & Tim Friehe, 2013. "The monopolistic polluter under environmental liability law: incentives for abatement and R&D," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 40(3), pages 753-770, March.

    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:sae:pubfin:v:12:y:1984:i:2:p:183-195. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.