Political Institutions and the Design of Environmental Policy in a Federal System with Asymmetric Information
Political Institutions and the Design of Environmental Policy in a Federal System with Asymmetric Information
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信息不对称联邦体系中的政治制度与环境政策设计
DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.122134
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发表时间：
1998
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Ulph
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Ulph
有关贸易与环境的政策辩论，经常提到有贸易联系的国家有需要协调其环境政策，即使是完全针对本地的污染问题;协调往往被理解为协调环境政策，为贸易提供一个“公平的竞争环境”。这一论点的基础是担心国家政府不会完全内部化环境外部性。在福利最大化政府的传统小型开放经济模式中，这种担忧是没有根据的;此外，即使政府没有完全将外部性内在化，政策改革也不必协调，如果国家之间存在真正的差异，协调也是不可取的。为了给国际环境政策提供一些基础，有必要脱离传统的小型开放经济模式，我考虑了一些这样的偏离，以及它们对政策和机构的影响。我在一个由超国家政府机构（例如联邦政府）进行协调的框架内工作。我开始用一个简单的次佳论点，即国家很大，国家政府没有完全纠正环境市场失灵，但他们不寻求操纵贸易条件。这为政策改革的协调提供了理由，在一个特殊的模式中，这可以被视为一种协调形式。然而，要考虑建立适当的机构来实现协调，就需要考虑各国政府为何没有完全纠正市场失灵。我考虑的第一个案例是战略贸易模型，在这个模型中，个别国家政府可能有动机制定薄弱的环境政策（“逐底竞争”）。虽然这为协调各国的国内环境政策提供了一个理论基础，但这不太可能需要协调，最低标准政策也可能失败。如果联邦政府对个别州的环境损害成本知之甚少，这可能需要在损害成本不同的州制定环境政策，这些损害成本比完全信息的情况更相似，但这并不等于环境政策的协调。接下来，我将考察政府如何制定环境和贸易政策的政治经济学模型，当政府的目标函数反映了特殊利益集团的影响力时。这导致了对政治制度的分析，以限制政府受特殊利益影响的自由裁量权，同时承认政府可以获得选民无法获得的信息。在所采用的特定模式的背景下，对政府自由裁量权的相关限制意味着环境政策的协调，我评估了在联邦和州两级限制政府自由裁量权的激励措施
Policy debates on trade and the environment frequently refer to a need for countries linked by trade to co-ordinate their environmental policies even for entirely local pollution problems; co-ordination is often taken to imply harmonisation of environmental policies to provide a 'level playing field' for trade. Underlying this argument is a concern that national governments will not fully internalise environmental externalities. In the conventional small open-economy model with a welfare-maximising government such a concern is unfounded; moreover even if governments did not fully internalise externalities, policy reforms would not have to be co-ordinated and harmonisation would be undesirable if there are genuine differences between countries. To give some basis for international environmental policy, it is necessary to depart from the conventional small open-economy model and I consider a number of such departures, together with their implications for policy and institutions. I work within a framework where any co-ordination is achieved by a supra-national government agency, e.g. in the form of a federal government. I begin with a simple second-best argument where countries are large, national governments have not fully corrected environmental market failures, but they do not seek to manipulate terms of trade. This provides a justification for co-ordination of policy reforms, and in a special model this can be considered a form of harmonisation. However to consider appropriate institutions to achieve co-ordination one needs to consider why national governments have not fully corrected market failures. The first case I consider is a strategic trade model, where individual national governments may have incentives to set weak environmental policies (a 'race to the bottom'). While this provides a rationale for co-ordination of the domestic environmental policies of states, this is unlikely to require harmonisation, and a policy of minimum standards may also fail. If the federal government is poorly informed about environmental damage costs in individual states, this may require setting environmental policies in states with different damage costs which are more similar than would be the case with full information, but this does not amount to harmonisation of environmental policies. I next examine political economy models of how governments may set their environmental and trade policies when governments have objective functions which reflect the influence of special interest groups. This leads to an analysis of political institutions for limiting the discretion of governments subject to the influence of special interests, while recognising that governments have access to information not available to voters. In the context of the particular model employed, the relevant restriction of government discretion implies harmonisation of environmental policies, and I assess the incentives for restricting government discretion at both the federal and state levels