A note on environmental policy and innovation when governments cannot commit

Juan-Pablo Montero

Energy Economics, 2011, vol. 33, issue S1, S13-S19

Abstract: It is widely accepted that one of the most important characteristics of an effective pollution control policy is to provide firms with credible incentives to make long-run investments in R&D that can drastically reduce pollution. Recognizing that a government may be tempted to revise its policy design after innovations become available, this note shows how the performance of two policy instruments—prices (uniform taxes) and quantities (tradeable pollution permits)—differ in such a setting. I also discuss the gains from combining either instrument with subsidies to adopting firms.

Keywords: Innovation; Pollution; Commitment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 L51 L90 O31 Q55 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988311001526
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:eneeco:v:33:y:2011:i:s1:p:s13-s19

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2011.07.022

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

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