White certificates and competition

Certificats blancs et concurrence

Claude Crampes and Thomas-Olivier Léautier
Additional contact information
Thomas-Olivier Léautier: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Tradable certificates are a good tool to promote economic activities when they increase the social surplus. White certificates are counterproductive, because although they encourage activities aimed at reducing energy consumption, these activities are ‘credence goods', i.e. goods whose real quality cannot be verified. They therefore lead to opportunistic behavior by professionals of building renovation and heating system installation. In order to make the system virtuous, certificates should guarantee the results actually measured, instead of ex ante technical evaluations. Given the cost of controls, the accuracy of the declarations should be ensured by heavy penalties for infringements, which is not feasible when companies are too small. Concentration in the building renovation sector should therefore be encouraged, respecting a trade-off between the collective benefit of having large companies responsible for energy performance and the risk of abuse of a dominant position or collusion by these same companies

Keywords: Regulations; Consumer welfare; Economic analysis; Economic efficiency; Concentration (unilateral effects); Dominant position (abuse); Relevant market; Price; Energy; Bien-être du consommateur; Analyse économique; Efficience économique; Concentration (effets unilatéraux); Position dominante (abus); Marché pertinent; Prix; Energie (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-ene
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03164801v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Competition Law Review, 2021, 1-2021, pp.66-74

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03164801v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: White certificates and competition (2020)
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:journl:hal-03164801

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().