Prices vs. quantities in presence of a second, unpriced, externality

Guy Meunier

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: We study a situation in which two goods jointly generate an externality but only one of them is regulated. Unilateral regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and related carbon leakage is a well known example. We compare tax and quantity instruments under uncertainty à la Weitzman (1974). Because of the uncertainty surrounding the unregulated good, the external cost is stochastic with both instruments. Whether the unregulated good quantity is more or less variable under a tax or under a quota depends on the degree of substitutability and the correlation between uncertainties on private valuations. In case of a positive correlation and imperfect substitution, a tax better stabilize the unregulated good quantity and can therefore dominate a quota when the slope of the external cost associated to the unregulated good is large. In a specification, relevant for leakage, it is shown that if uncertainty about the unregulated good (imports) is large, a tax might be preferable to a quota, regardless of the convexity of the external cost.

Keywords: Environmental regulation; Tax; Quotas; Multi-pollutant; Carbon leakage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-12-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-reg
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01242040v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-01242040v1/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-01242040

Access Statistics for this paper

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