L'effet du Lobbying sur les Instruments de la Politique Environnementale

This paper presents a model where an interest group gathering the polluters lobby an environmental regulator in charge of selecting an environmental policy instrument. Three policy instruments are analyzed: an emission standard, an emission tax and an Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). We show that the ETS emerging in the lobbying equilibrium always yields a higher welfare than the standard. The welfare ranking betwen the tax and the ETS depends on parameters? value. Moreover, the model predicts that the regulator always adopt an ETS when the status quo does not involve any policy. But, in the case where a regulatory standard is already in place, no policy change occurs. This result suggests that a difficult diffusion of economic instruments in contexts where a traditional Command and Control policy is already developed.