Political economy, cost and efficiency aspects of market-based regulation: The case of tradeable permits under the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
Market-based economic instruments have become increasingly important as alternatives to conventional methods of environmental regulation, as public policy makers are increasingly aware of the ineffectiveness of command and control regulation. A remarkable breakthrough in the search for lasting solutions to pressing environmental problems is the emergence of the tradeable permits. They recognize the need for establishing property rights prior to addressing the issues of environmental degradation, and offer solutions that are cost-effective, without requiring complex technical information about industry structures to monitor compliance. However, the current literature provides little guidance for evaluating the overall effectiveness of this new economic instrument. The lack of simultaneous emphasis on all of the important dimensions of market-based regulation led to conflicting views among economists as to the significance of tradeable permits, and the circumstances under which they perform effectively. In an attempt to resolve these different viewpoints, this dissertation undertakes an in-depth inquiry into three fundamental facets of tradeable permits, namely political economy aspects, cost aspects and efficiency aspects. The primary emphasis is on the U.S. SO2 emissions trading program which was accompanied by the Amendments to the U.S. Clean Air Act in 1990 (CAAA). Using a political economy framework, the dissertation examines the institutional dimensions of tradeable permits, and explores how they influence the instrument choice at different stages of the policy making process. The investigation uncovers a number of important linkages of political, social, legal and market conditions, whose interactions determine the desirability of market-based economic instruments over other alternatives. Using examples mainly from the United States, it demonstrates how the performance of tradeable permits depends on situation-specific characteristics of the above factors. The dissertation then considers the cost aspects of the tradeable permits in order to elucidate the behaviour of the affected firms, and to resolve conflicting views of the potential effects of the tradeable permits on the production costs of regulated industries. The investigation is based on an econometric framework and a large-scale data set representing coal-fuelled electric utilities operating in the United States. It reveals that there has been an upward pressure on the production costs of electric utilities in the aftermath of the CAAA, and that as a result, the utilities have adjusted their optimal mix of inputs by shifting away from pollution-intensive inputs. The empirical analysis of market-based regulation then explores efficiency aspects of tradeable permits, based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and a Tobit model. This reveals that tradeable permits created an incentive to search for "greener" production technologies as part of the compliance with the new market-based regulation. In particular, the resulting improvements to the existing power generation technologies surpass the increases in production costs. Therefore, the CAAA resulted in a net improvement in production efficiency of the U.S. electric utilities. This evidence is consistent with the latest findings of the literature, and supports the Porter hypothesis, that environmental regulation confers to firms a dynamic incentive to innovate.
Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.
Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction distillée sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Apprise à partir de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Gemma. Le mode candidate est l'union des têtes enseignantes seuillées; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont ni des étiquettes humaines ni des étiquettes directes de modèles de pointe.
Scores Codex et Gemma par catégorie
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Communication savante | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Science ouverte | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule tête enseignante, pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».