IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/dicedp/106.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Design standards and technology adoption: Welfare effects of increasing environmental fines when the number of firms is endogenous

Author

Listed:
  • Baumann, Florian
  • Friehe, Tim

Abstract

This paper examines the consequences of an increase in the expected fine for non-compliance with an environmental design standard for an industry with Cournot competition and free entry. Our analysis is quite timely, given recent policy proposals to raise environmental fines. We describe the range in which changes in the environmental fine have no consequences, and detail the various other effects that emerge. It is established that an increase in the expected fine for non-compliance may have adverse welfare consequences, while it always serves the purpose of inducing a greater share of firms to adopt the prescribed technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Baumann, Florian & Friehe, Tim, 2013. "Design standards and technology adoption: Welfare effects of increasing environmental fines when the number of firms is endogenous," DICE Discussion Papers 106, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:dicedp:106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/81932/1/767821440.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sandra Rousseau & Stef Proost, 2009. "The relative efficiency of market-based environmental policy instruments with imperfect compliance," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 16(1), pages 25-42, February.
    2. repec:adr:anecst:y:2004:i:75-76:p:11 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Macho-Stadler, Ines & Perez-Castrillo, David, 2006. "Optimal enforcement policy and firms' emissions and compliance with environmental taxes," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 110-131, January.
    4. Barnett, A H, 1980. "The Pigouvian Tax Rule under Monopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(5), pages 1037-1041, December.
    5. Y. H. Farzin, 2004. "Can Stricter Environmental Standards Benefit the Industry and Enhance Welfare," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 75-76, pages 223-255.
    6. Agnar Sandmo, 2002. "Efficient Environmental Policy with Imperfect Compliance," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 23(1), pages 85-103, September.
    7. Bar-Gill, Oren & Harel, Alon, 2001. "Crime Rates and Expected Sanctions: The Economics of Deterrence Revisited," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(2), pages 485-501, Part I Ju.
    8. A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), 2007. "Handbook of Law and Economics," Handbook of Law and Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    9. Goerke, Laszlo & Runkel, Marco, 2006. "Profit Tax Evasion Under Oligopoly With Endogenous Market Structure," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 59(4), pages 851-857, December.
    10. Endres,Alfred, 2011. "Environmental Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107002142, September.
    11. Helfand, Gloria E, 1991. "Standards versus Standards: The Effects of Different Pollution Restrictions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 622-634, June.
    12. Lee, Sang-Ho, 1999. "Optimal Taxation for Polluting Oligopolists with Endogenous Market Structure," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 293-308, May.
    13. Nuno Garoupa (ed.), 2009. "Criminal Law and Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12729.
    14. Endres, Alfred & Friehe, Tim, 2011. "Incentives to diffuse advanced abatement technology under environmental liability law," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 30-40, July.
    15. Baumann, Florian & Friehe, Tim, 2012. "On the evasion of employment protection legislation," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 9-17.
    16. Laszlo Goerke & Marco Runkel, 2011. "Tax evasion and competition," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 58(5), pages 711-736, November.
    17. Philippe Mahenc, 2007. "Are green products over-priced?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 38(4), pages 461-473, December.
    18. 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.
    19. Carmen Arguedas & Eva Camacho & José Zofío, 2010. "Environmental Policy Instruments: Technology Adoption Incentives with Imperfect Compliance," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 47(2), pages 261-274, October.
    20. Requate, Till, 2005. "Dynamic incentives by environmental policy instruments--a survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2-3), pages 175-195, August.
    21. Sandra Rousseau & Stef Proost, 2005. "Comparing Environmental Policy Instruments in the Presence of Imperfect Compliance – A Case Study," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 32(3), pages 337-365, November.
    22. A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), 2007. "Handbook of Law and Economics," Handbook of Law and Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    23. Farzin, Y H, 2003. "The Effects of Emissions Standards on Industry," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 315-327, November.
    24. Murphy, James J. & Stranlund, John K., 2006. "Direct and market effects of enforcing emissions trading programs: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 217-233, October.
    25. Clara Villegas-Palacio & Jessica Coria, 2010. "On the interaction between imperfect compliance and technology adoption: taxes versus tradable emissions permits," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 274-291, December.
    26. Brent Hueth & Tigran Melkonyan, 2009. "Standards and the regulation of environmental risk," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 219-246, December.
    27. Endres,Alfred, 2011. "Environmental Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521173926, September.
    28. Requate, Till, 2005. "Environmental Policy under Imperfect Competition: A Survey," Economics Working Papers 2005-12, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    29. Timo Goeschl & Ole Jürgens, 2014. "Criminalizing environmental offences: when the prosecutor’s helping hand hurts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 199-219, April.
    30. Besanko, David, 1987. "Performance versus design standards in the regulation of pollution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 19-44, October.
    31. Alfred Endres & Regina Bertram & Bianca Rundshagen, 2007. "Environmental Liability Law and Induced Technical Change – The Role of Discounting," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 36(3), pages 341-366, March.
    32. Malik, Arun S., 1990. "Markets for pollution control when firms are noncompliant," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 97-106, March.
    33. Keeler, Andrew G., 1991. "Noncompliant firms in transferable discharge permit markets: Some extensions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 180-189, September.
    34. repec:bla:scandj:v:97:y:1995:i:3:p:411-20 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. 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.
    2. Friehe Tim & Mungan Murat C., 2020. "A Note on Productive and Dynamic Inefficiencies of Intermediate Regulatory Sanctions," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-8, January.

    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. Alfred Endres & Tim Friehe, 2012. "Generalized Progress of Abatement Technology: Incentives Under Environmental Liability Law," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 53(1), pages 61-71, September.
    2. 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.
    3. Clara Villegas-Palacio & Jessica Coria, 2010. "On the interaction between imperfect compliance and technology adoption: taxes versus tradable emissions permits," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 274-291, December.
    4. Alfred Endres & Tim Friehe, 2014. "The reasonable person standard: trading off static and dynamic efficiency," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 249-267, April.
    5. Lidia Vidal-Meliá & Carmen Arguedas & Eva Camacho-Cuena & José Luis Zofío, 2022. "An Experimental Analysis of the Effects of Imperfect Compliance on Technology Adoption," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 81(3), pages 425-451, March.
    6. Stranlund, John K., 2006. "Risk Aversion and Compliance in Markets for Pollution Control," Working Paper Series 14522, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Department of Resource Economics.
    7. Tim Friehe, 2013. "The Role of Investment in Environmental Lobbying Contests," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(3), pages 337-352, November.
    8. Angelo Antoci & Simone Borghesi & Gianluca Iannucci & Paolo Russu, 2020. "Emission permits, innovation and sanction in an evolutionary game," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 37(2), pages 525-546, July.
    9. Villegas, Clara & Coria, Jessica, 2009. "Taxes, Permits and the Adoption of Abatement Technology under Imperfect Compliance," Working Papers in Economics 368, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    10. Ino, Hiroaki & Matsumura, Toshihiro, 2021. "Optimality of emission pricing policies based on emission intensity targets under imperfect competition," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    11. Baumann Florian & Friehe Tim, 2016. "Competitive Pressure and Corporate Crime," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(2), pages 647-687, April.
    12. Alfred Endres & Bianca Rundshagen, 2013. "Incentives to Diffuse Advanced Abatement Technology Under the Formation of International Environmental Agreements," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(2), pages 177-210, October.
    13. Alfred Endres & Tim Friehe & Bianca Rundshagen, 2015. "Environmental liability law and R&D subsidies: results on the screening of firms and the use of uniform policy," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 17(4), pages 521-541, October.
    14. Alfred Endres & Tim Friehe & Bianca Rundshagen, 2015. "“It’s All in the Mix!”- Internalizing externalities with R&D subsidies and environmental liability," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(1), pages 151-178, January.
    15. Endres, Alfred & Friehe, Tim, 2011. "R&D and abatement under environmental liability law: Comparing incentives under strict liability and negligence if compensation differs from harm," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 419-425, May.
    16. Inés Macho-Stadler, 2008. "Environmental regulation: choice of instruments under imperfect compliance," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-21, March.
    17. Lambert Schoonbeek & Frans Vries, 2009. "Environmental taxes and industry monopolization," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 94-106, August.
    18. John Stranlund, 2007. "The regulatory choice of noncompliance in emissions trading programs," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 38(1), pages 99-117, September.
    19. Carmen Arguedas, 2013. "Pollution standards, technology investment and fines for non-compliance," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 156-176, October.
    20. Phillia Restiani & Regina Betz, 2010. "A Theoretical Model of Optimal Compliance Decisions under Different Penalty Designs in Emissions Trading Markets," Environmental Economics Research Hub Research Reports 1086, Environmental Economics Research Hub, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    pollution; regulation; design standard; endogenous number of firms; environmental fines; SEC;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • Q55 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Technological Innovation
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:dicedp:106. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diduede.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.