Markets and Environmental Management with a Storable Pollutant
- Creators
- Lewis, Tracy R.
Abstract
Lee (1977) investigates possibilities where pollutants may be stored for a period of time and later released into the environment when adverse effects are minimal. The treatment and storage of pollutants before their release into the environment is a crucial part of many abatement programs. Surprisingly, emission charges will not induce optimal abatement when storage is possible. This occurs because the firms' response to the dynamic tax is indeterminant. We suggest alternative controls, whereby rights to emit pollutants are sold competitively and demonstrate that markets provide incentives for the optimal generation-storage-emission of pollution by firms. In deriving this result an important difference between markets and taxes is revealed. With markets there is still indeterminacy at the firm level, but the aggregate response of all firms is dictated by market forces that insure pollution is reduced by some desired amount.
Additional Information
Revised. The author wishes to thank Stuart Burness and Toby Page for helpful comments. Research support from the Environmental Quality Lab at the California Institute of Technology is gratefully acknowledged. Published as Lewis, Tracy R. "Markets and environmental management with a storable pollutant." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 8.1 (1981): 11-18.Attached Files
Submitted - sswp189_-_revised.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 82584
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20171023-111645804
- Environmental Quality Laboratory
- Created
-
2017-10-24Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers, Environmental Quality Laboratory
- Series Name
- Social Science Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 189