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Do Lower Prices For Polluting Goods Make Environmental Externalities Worse?

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  • Brennan, Timothy

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract
Lower prices for polluting goods will increase their sales and the pollution that results from their production or use. Conventional intuition suggests that this relationship implies a greater need for environmental policy when prices of "dirty" goods fall. But the economic inefficiency resulting overproduction of polluting goods may fall, not rise, as the cost of producing those goods falls. While lower costs exacerbate overproduction, they also reduce the difference between private benefit and the total social cost--the sum of private and external costs--associated with that overproduction. The author of this paper derives a test, based on readily observed or estimated parameters for conditions in which the latter effect outweighs the former. In such cases, making a dirty good cheaper to produce may reduce the need for pollution policy. This test, with minor modifications, can be applied where the dirty good is not competitive, demand rather than supply drives the increase in output, and abatement in production can reduce pollution. The analysis may speak to whether stricter air pollution regulations should accompany policies to reduce electricity costs by making power generation more competitive.

Suggested Citation

  • Brennan, Timothy, 1999. "Do Lower Prices For Polluting Goods Make Environmental Externalities Worse?," RFF Working Paper Series dp-99-40, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-99-40
    as

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    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-99-40.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Martin L. Weitzman, 1974. "Prices vs. Quantities," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(4), pages 477-491.
    2. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    3. Daniel F. Spulber, 1989. "Regulation and Markets," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262192756, April.
    4. Timothy Brennan, 1996. "Is Cost-of-Service Regulation Worth the Cost?," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 25-42.
    5. Baumol,William J. & Oates,Wallace E., 1988. "The Theory of Environmental Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521322249.
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    7. Lawrence H. Goulder & Ian W.H. Parry & Dallas Burtraw, 2002. "Revenue-Raising versus Other Approaches to Environmental Protection: The Critical Significance of Preexisting Tax Distortions," Chapters, in: Lawrence H. Goulder (ed.), Environmental Policy Making in Economies with Prior Tax Distortions, chapter 24, pages 447-470, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Downing, Paul B. & Watson, William Jr., 1974. "The economics of enforcing air pollution controls," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 219-236, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Burtraw, Dallas & Palmer, Karen L. & Heintzelman, Martin, 2000. "Electricity Restructuring: Consequences and Opportunities for the Environment," Discussion Papers 10854, Resources for the Future.
    2. Burtraw, Dallas & Palmer, Karen, 2005. "The Environmental Impacts of Electricity Restructuring: Looking Back and Looking Forward," RFF Working Paper Series dp-05-07, Resources for the Future.

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