Emissions Trading and Profitability: The Swedish Pulp and Paper Industry

The purpose of this paper is to develop models with and without emissions trading and to compare industry profits under the two regimes. The model in which emissions trading is permitted is a nonparametric industry frontier model in the spirit of Fare, Grosskopf and Li (1992). It is relative to this model that industry profit is computed. This profit is compared to the profit without emissions trading to give an estimate of the potential gains that can be realised by allowing for emissions trading. The model, which is applied to data for the Swedish pulp and paper industry, thus provides evidence as to the cost efficiency of the prevailing individual regulations for this particular industry.