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Taxing Pollutuion: Agglomeration and Welfare Consequences

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  • Marcus Berliant
  • Shin-Kun Peng
  • Ping Wang

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that a pollution tax with a fixed cost component may lead, by itself, to segregation between clean and dirty firms without heterogeneous preferences or increasing returns. We construct a simple model with two locations and two industries (clean and dirty) where pollution is a by-product of dirty good manufacturing. Under proper assumptions, a completely stratified configuration with all dirty firms clustering in one city emerges as the only equilibrium outcome when there is a fixed cost component of the pollution tax. Moreover, a stratified Pareto optimum can never be supported by a competitive spatial equilibrium with a linear pollution tax. To support such a stratified Pareto optimum, however, an effective but unconventional policy pre-scription is to redistribute the pollution tax revenue from the dirty to the clean city residents. JEL Classification: D62, H23, R13. Keywords: Pollution Tax, Agglomeration of Polluting Producers, Endogenous Stratification.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcus Berliant & Shin-Kun Peng & Ping Wang, 2012. "Taxing Pollutuion: Agglomeration and Welfare Consequences," ERSA conference papers ersa12p94, European Regional Science Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa12p94
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    Cited by:

    1. Junsong Wang & Xinyue Ye & Yehua Dennis Wei, 2019. "Effects of Agglomeration, Environmental Regulations, and Technology on Pollutant Emissions in China: Integrating Spatial, Social, and Economic Network Analyses," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-20, January.
    2. Guoge Yang & Fengyi Wang & Feng Deng & Xianhong Xiang, 2023. "Impact of Digital Transformation on Enterprise Carbon Intensity: The Moderating Role of Digital Information Resources," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-26, January.
    3. Marcelo Arbex & Christian Trudeau, 2015. "Heterogeneous preferences, atmospheric externalities, and environmental taxation," Working Papers 1503, University of Windsor, Department of Economics, revised Jun 2016.
    4. Neng Shen & Yuqing Zhao & Qunwei Wang, 2018. "Diversified Agglomeration, Specialized Agglomeration, and Emission Reduction Effect—A Nonlinear Test Based on Chinese City Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-22, June.
    5. Juin-Jen Chang & Yi-Ling Cheng & Shin-Kun Peng, 2019. "Trade, Emissions, and Regulatory (Non-)Compliance: Implications of Firm Heterogeneity," IEAS Working Paper : academic research 19-A005, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
    6. Xiaolin Wang & Zhenyang Li, 2024. "Re-Examination of the Relationship between Industrial Agglomeration and Haze Pollution: From the Perspective of the Spatial Moderating Effect of Environmental Regulation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-19, September.
    7. Murat Öztürk & Hans Peters & Ton Storcken, 2014. "On the location of public bads: strategy-proofness under two-dimensional single-dipped preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(1), pages 83-108, May.
    8. Fu-Chuan Lai, 2019. "Special feature in honor of Shin-Kun Peng," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 757-759, October.
    9. Juin‐Jen Chang & Yi‐Ling Cheng & Shin‐Kun Peng, 2022. "Trade, emissions, and regulatory (non‐)compliance: Implications of firm heterogeneity," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 57-82, February.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    pollution tax; agglomeration of polluting producers; endogenous stratification.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • R13 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General Equilibrium and Welfare Economic Analysis of Regional Economies

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