A tradeable permits market is said to be efficient when all affected firms trade permits until their marginal costs equal the market price. Detailed firm-level data are generally required to perform such an efficiency test, yet such information is rarely available. If firms face a declining...

We consider a market for storable pollution permits in which a large agent and a fringe of small agents gradually consume a stock of permits until they reach a long-run emissions limit. The subgame-perfect equilibrium exhibits no market power unless the large agent’s share of the initial stock...

I study the design of environmental policies for a regulator that has incomplete information on firms’ emissions and costs of production and abatement (e.g., air pollution in cities with numerous small polluting sources). Because of incomplete information on emissions, there is no policy that...

This paper studies firms’ incentives to invest in environmental R&D under different market structures (Cournot and Bertrand) and environmental policy instruments (emission standards, taxes, tradeable permits and auctioned permits). Because of market strategic effects, R&D incentives vary...

Following the structure of many commodity markets, we consider a few large firms and a competitive fringe of many small suppliers choosing quantities in an infinite-horizon setting subject to demand shocks. We show that a collusive agreement among the large firms may not only bring an output...

In this paper we discuss second-generation electricity reforms being formulated in Latin America and how they are being reshaped by the California crisis, which had stood as a paradigm, at least in theory, for fully competitive markets. We argue that the main lesson policy makers in Latin...

I study a regulatory process in which both the regulator and the regulated firm propose prices that in case of disagreement are settled through final-offer arbitration – a practice currently used in Chile for setting prices in the water sector. Rather than submitting a single offer, each party...

Efficient regulation of the commons requires information about the regulated firms that is rarely available to regulators (e.g., cost of pollution abatement). This paper proposes a simple mechanism that implements the first-best for any number of firms: a uniform price, sealed-bid auction of an...

We study whether and to what a large supplier facing a competitive fringe could effectively move the market of a depletable stock such as copper. We argue that the mere possibility for the large stockholder (i.e., leader) to sign forward contracts significantly reduces its market power. We show,...

In this paper, we investigate the effect of market power on the equilibrium path of an emission permits market in which firms can bank current permits for use in later periods. In particular, we study the market equilibrium for a large (potentially dominant) firm and a competitive fringe with...