I model environmental overcompliance as a signalling device. In the model, a benevolent government may or may not tighten environmental standards. Production costs under the stricter environmental regulation are private information to the firms, and tightening environmental policy is socially...

We consider the pricing of a uniformly mixed pollutant when enforcement is costly with a model of optimal, possibly firm-specific, emissions taxes and their enforcement. We argue that optimality requires an enforcement strategy that induces full compliance by every firm. This holds whether or...