The shadow price of assimilative capacity in optimal flow pollution control

Marc Leandri

Ecological Economics, 2009, vol. 68, issue 4, 1020-1031

Abstract: We present a model of optimal flow pollution control considering explicitly the dynamics of the corresponding assimilative capacity. We focus first on the degradation of this assimilative capacity triggered by pollution excesses and determine the intertemporal efficient pollution path, taking into account this ecological feedback. Our analysis shows that a minimum level of initial assimilative capacity is necessary to prevent its optimal extinction. We then allow for the restoration of assimilative capacity and characterize the conditions under which this option frees the optimal policy from the dependency on the initial conditions. In both cases our results call for environmental standards based on the shadow price of assimilative capacity that are stricter than the static optimum commonly used in flow pollution control.

Keywords: Pollution; control; Assimilative; capacity; Ecosystem; services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(08)00502-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The shadow price of assimilative capacity in optimal flow pollution control (2009)
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:eee:ecolec:v:68:y:2009:i:4:p:1020-1031

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().