scholarly journals The Strategic Use of Innovation to Influence Environmental Policy: Taxes versus Standards

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 973-1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Moner-Colonques ◽  
Santiago J. Rubio

Abstract This paper evaluates the strategic behavior of a polluting monopolist to influence environmental policy, either with taxes or with standards, comparing two alternative policy games. The first of the games assumes that the regulator commits to an ex-ante level of the policy instrument. The second one is the time-consistent policy game. We find that the strategic behavior of the firm is welfare improving and leads to more environmental innovation than under regulatory commitment if a tax is used to control pollution. However, the contrary occurs if an emission standard is used. Under commitment, it is shown that both policy instruments are equivalent. We conclude that the optimal environmental policy is to use an emission tax since it yields the same welfare level than an emission standard for a committed regulator yet a larger welfare for a non-committed regulator.

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keisuke Hattori

AbstractThis paper investigates firm incentives for developing environmentally clean technologies in a simple two-country model with international oligopoly and lack of regulatory commitment, and compares the incentives under price and quantity regulations with and without policy cooperation between governments. We examine whether policy coordination (choices of policy instruments or policy harmonization) encourages environmental innovation when firms have strategic innovation incentives that may influence future regulation. In a case where policies are non-cooperatively set by governments, quantity regulations yield a greater static benefit for countries; however, dynamically, price regulations encourage more innovation than quantity regulations when environmental damages are not so large. Under both price and quantity regulation regimes, cooperative policy harmonization necessarily enhances net benefits in each country, whereas it discourages firms' innovation incentives when environmental damages are not so small.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-82
Author(s):  
George S. Tavlas

There has long been a presumption that the price-level stabilization frameworks of Irving Fisher and Chicagoans Henry Simons and Lloyd Mints were essentially equivalent. I show that there were subtle, but important, differences in the rationales underlying the policies of Fisher and the Chicagoans. Fisher’s framework involved substantial discretion in the setting of the policy instruments; for the Chicagoans the objective of a policy rule was to tie the hands of the authorities in order to reduce discretion and, thus, monetary policy uncertainty. In contrast to Fisher, the Chicagoans provided assessments of the workings of alternative rules, assessed various criteria—including simplicity and reduction of political pressures—in the specification of rules, and concluded that rules would provide superior performance compared with discretion. Each of these characteristics provided a direct link to the rules-based framework of Milton Friedman. Like Friedman’s framework, Simons’s preferred rule targeted a policy instrument.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110074
Author(s):  
Samiul Parvez Ahmed ◽  
Sarwar Uddin Ahmed ◽  
Ikramul Hasan

The contemporary integration policies (Community Cohesion Agenda [CCA]) of the United Kingdom have been criticized for their foundational weaknesses, conceptual inadequacies, myopic views with regard to the complexity of the issue, lack of evidence, and so on. Vast majority of the studies conducted to verify this discourse have been done in the line of theoretical arguments of diversity management rather than exploring their connections to a target community in reality. This study aims at establishing a linkage between the growing theoretical arguments of the integration discourse with empirical data in light of the policy framework of the CCA. We have selected the fastest growing Bangladeshi community of the CCA-adapted Aston City of Birmingham as the representative group of the ethnic minority communities of the United Kingdom. Qualitative data collection approach has been followed, where primary in-depth interviews were conducted on various policy actors, social workers, faith leaders, and Bangladeshi residents of Aston. The entire policy instrument, starting from its broad purposes to operational strategies, has been severely challenged by both residents of the community and relevant policy-implementing bodies in Aston. CCA policies appear to be largely inclined toward the interculturalism/communitarianism ideology rather than to multiculturalism. However, the empirical evidence shows that the need for multiculturalism, to be more specific—Bristol School of Multiculturalism, as a political theory remains in the integration discourse in the context of the United Kingdom. Findings are expected to have implications on practitioners and policy makers in designing diversity management policy instruments by having a wider synthesized view on both theoretical argument and empirical data.


Author(s):  
Leonidas Milios

AbstractThe transition to a circular economy is a complex process requiring wide multi-level and multi-stakeholder engagement and can be facilitated by appropriate policy interventions. Taking stock of the importance of a well-balanced policy mix that includes a variety of complementing policy instruments, the circular economy action plan of the European Union (COM(2020) 98 final) includes a section about “getting the economics right” in which it encourages the application of economic instruments. This contribution presents a comprehensive taxation framework, applied across the life cycle of products. The framework includes (1) a raw material resource tax, (2) reuse/repair tax relief, and (3) a waste hierarchy tax at the end of life of products. The research is based on a mixed method approach, using different sources to analyse the different measures in the framework. More mature concepts, such as material resource taxes, are analysed by reviewing the existing literature. The analysis of tax relief on repairs is based on interviews with stakeholders in Sweden, where this economic policy instrument has been implemented since 2017. Finally, for the waste hierarchy tax, which is a novel proposition in this contribution, macroeconomic modelling is used to analyse potential impacts of future implementation. In all cases, several implementation challenges are identified, and potential solutions are discussed according to literature and empirical sources. Further research is required both at the individual instrument and at the framework level. Each of the tax proposals needs a more detailed examination for its specificities of implementation, following the results of this study.


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