An Endogenous Approach to the Polluted River Problem

Aymeric Lardon () and David Lowing ()
Additional contact information
Aymeric Lardon: GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - EM - EMLyon Business School - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
David Lowing: CentraleSupélec, LGI - Laboratoire Génie Industriel - CentraleSupélec - Université Paris-Saclay

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Polluting agents situated along a river must collectively clean it to meet a minimum water quality standard. Since cleaning operations are costly, it is crucial to allocate these expenses fairly. This paper introduces the Upstream Prorata Sharing method, which endogenously assigns responsibility to each agent based on the potential costs their pollution imposes on downstream river segments. We present three distinct axiomatic characterizations grounded in different principles. First, we explore fairness properties, which address scenarios where some agents reduce their cleanup costs. Next, we examine merging properties, analyzing the implications of two agents combining into a single entity. Finally, we propose a redistribution property, which quantifies how much an agent should contribute to cleaning downstream segments.

Keywords: Polluted rivers; Cost sharing; Prorata principle; Axiomatization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01-16
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04892388v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04892388v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04892388

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().