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on Resource Economics |
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Issue of 2005‒09‒29
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Joerg Breitscheidel; Hans Gersbach |
| Abstract: | We explore the design of self-financing tax/subsidy mechanisms to solve hold-up problems in environmental regulation. Under Cournot competition, announcing the subsidy rate seems to be preferable to announcing the tax rate. Moreover, for constant marginal damage the hold-up problem can always be solved by setting subsidies. Under Bertrand competition, only announcing the tax rate can induce at least one firm to invest. We suggest that feebate systems in the automotive sector should be designed as self-financing tax/subsidy mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | hold-up problems, environmental regulation, taxes and subsidies, self-financing mechanisms, emission control |
| JEL: | D43 D62 L50 Q28 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1528&r=res |
| By: | Thomas Christiaans; Thomas Eichner; Rüdiger Pethig |
| Abstract: | In this paper we develop a micro ecosystem model whose basic entities are representative organisms which behave as if maximizing their net offspring under constraints. Net offspring is increasing in prey biomass intake, declining in the loss of own biomass to predators and Allee’s Law applies. The organism’s constraint reflects its perception of how scarce its own biomass and the biomass of its prey is. In the short-run periods prices (scarcity indicators) coordinate and determine all biomass transactions and net offspring which directly translates into population growth functions. We are able to explicitly determine these growth functions for a simple food web when specific parametric net offspring functions are chosen in the micro-level ecosystem model. For the case of a single species our model is shown to yield the well-known Verhulst-Pearl logistic growth function. With two species in predator-prey relationship, we derive differential equations whose dynamics are completely characterized and turn out to be similar to the predator-prey model with Michaelis-Menten type functional response. With two species competing for a single resource we find that coexistence is a knife-edge feature confirming Tschirhart’s (2002) result in a different but related model. |
| Keywords: | species, growth, extinction, predator-prey relations, resource competition |
| JEL: | Q20 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1530&r=res |
| By: | Cremer, Helmuth; De Donder, Philippe; Gahvari, Firouz |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a political economy model that explains the low rate of emission taxes in the U.S., as well as the fact that neither Democrats nor Republicans propose to increase them. The voters differ according to their wage and capital incomes which are assumed to have a bivariate lognormal distribution. They vote over the emission tax rate and a budgetary rule that specifies how to redistribute the tax proceeds. The political competition is modeled à la Roemer (2001) where the two parties care for the policies they propose as well as the probability of winning; the equilibrium solution concept is the Party Unanimity Nash Equilibrium (PUNE). We calibrate the model using U.S. data and compute the PUNEs numerically. Two main results emerge. All "viable" PUNEs entail subsidies on emissions (as opposed to taxes). This indicates the importance of distributional concerns in garnering political support for environmental policies. Second, parties always propose an interior value for the budgetary rule even though all citizens prefer extreme values. This illustrates the emergence of political compromise to attract voters. |
| Keywords: | distributional concerns; Emission taxes; political competition; political compromise; PUNE |
| JEL: | D72 H23 |
| Date: | 2005–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5228&r=res |