Moral concerns on tradable pollution permits in international environmental agreements

Johan Eyckmans () and Snorre Kverndokk

Ecological Economics, 2010, vol. 69, issue 9, 1814-1823

Abstract: We investigate how moral concerns about permit trading affect an endogenous pollution permit trading equilibrium, where governments choose non-cooperatively the amount of permits they allocate to domestic industries. Politicians may feel reluctant to allow permit trading and/or may prefer that abatement is undertaken domestically because of moral concerns. This will have an effect on the initial permit allocations, and, therefore, on global emissions. The impact on global emissions depends on the precise formulation of the moral concerns, but under reasonable assumptions, we show that global emissions may increase. Thus, doing what is perceived as good does not always yield the desired outcome. However, this can be offset by restrictions on permit trading when governments have moral concerns about this trade.

Keywords: Tradable; emission; permits; International; environmental; agreements; Non-cooperative; game; theory; Moral; motivation; Identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(10)00163-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Moral concerns on tradable pollution permits in international environmental agreements (2009)
Working Paper: Moral Concerns on Tradable Pollution Permits in International Environmental Agreements (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:69:y:2010:i:9:p:1814-1823

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 ().