[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/regeco/v21y2002i3p305-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Timing of Environmental Policy: A Note on the Role of Product Differentiation

Author

Listed:
  • Poyago-Theotoky, Joanna
  • Teerasuwannajak, Khemarat
Abstract
We examine the role that product differentiation can play in the design of environmental policy under full commitment and no commitment on the part of the environmental regulator. We consider a setting with two firms selling a differentiated product which generates pollution through emissions. Firms can reduce their emissions by undertaking abatement activities while an environmental regulator taxes emissions. The main results are: (1) When products are highly differentiated, the optimal time-consistent (no commitment) tax is always lower than the optimal pre-commitment tax. As the degree of product differentiation decreases, for relatively efficient abatement technology and high damages, the time-consistent emission tax exceeds the optimal pre-commitment one. (2) Abatement when product differentiation is extensive is higher under the time-consistent regime unless the abatement technology is extremely efficient. The same ranking applies to social welfare. However, as products become more and more similar, these results are (partially) reversed and pre-commitment could lead to both higher levels of abatement and welfare. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Poyago-Theotoky, Joanna & Teerasuwannajak, Khemarat, 2002. "The Timing of Environmental Policy: A Note on the Role of Product Differentiation," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 305-316, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:regeco:v:21:y:2002:i:3:p:305-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0922-680X/contents
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:regeco:v:21:y:2002:i:3:p:305-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.