The composite market design is a proposal for a Transferable Discharge Permit (TDP) system which specifically includes agricultural non-point source (NPS) dischargers and addresses both property rights and transaction cost problems. The first step to implementation of a composite market scheme...

One argument in favor of market based pollution control policies is sometimes exaggerated, and a different argument is usually ignored. Regardless of whether investment is fixed or endogenous, market based policies might lead to a higher or lower equilibrium abatement compared to the level under...

The U.S. and West European environmental protection programs have incorporated different economic instruments for controlling pollution. The U.S. has made extensive use of tradable permits of several forms but has never used direct pollution taxes. The countries of the European Community have...

An under-appreciated advantage of tradable permits regulation is its ability to create better decision-making when emissions are stochastic. In general, the distribution of stochastic actual emissions around intended emissions results in over- or under-compliance. Permit tradability reduces the...

A common claim in both the public and academic debate is that a tradable emission permits scheme does not provide sufficient incentives for R&D investments. The present paper addresses R&D investments and penetration rates of new technology focusing on the specific characteristics of a tradable...

Designing an emissions trading scheme requires in-depth knowledge about several aspects. This paper attempts to clarify some important design points of the forthcoming emissions trading scheme for aviation under the EU ETS. Five general key points of system design are acknowledged and...

Permits markets are celebrated as a policy instrument since they allow (i) firms to equalize marginal costs through trade and (ii) the regulator to distribute the burden in a politically desirable way. These two concerns, however, may conflict in a dynamic setting. Anticipating the regulator's...

In this paper we examine an alternative policy scenario, where governments allow polluting firms to trade permits in a strategic environmental policy model. We demonstrate, among other things, that with no market power in the permits market, governments of the exporting firms do not have an...

This paper compares taxes and tradable permits when used to regulate a competitive and polluting downstream industry that can purchase an abatement technology from a monopolistic upstream industry. Second-best policies are derived for the full range of the abatement technology's emission...