This paper shows that tradable emissions permits and an emissions tax affect the firms' technology choice differently under uncertainty. A tax encourages the most flexible technology if and only if stochastic costs and the equilibrium permit price have sufficiently strong positive covariance,...

The relationship between the concept of option value in the literature on environmental preservation and the financial theory of option value is discussed by Fisher (2000), suggesting an equivalence between the two concepts. In a recent paper, Mensink and Requate (2004) argue that Fisher’s...

Investment in pollution prevention technologies are often made under significant uncertainty about the future pay-off from the investments. However, as time passes some of the uncertainties may be resolved by new information, implying that the timing of investments becomes an important issue for...

Authorities often lack information for efficient regulation of the commons. This paper derives a criterion comparing prices versus tradable quantities in terms of expected welfare, given uncertainty, optimal policy and endogenous cost structure. I show that one cannot determine which regulatory...

This paper shows that tradable emissions permits and an emissions tax have a risk-related technology choice effect. We first examine the first- and second-order moments in the probability distributions of optimal abatement and production under the two instruments. The two instruments will, in...