Alternative Environmental Policies in a Second Best World: A General Equilibrium and Empirical Analysis

这项研究包括一个两部分的项目，研究一些环境政策，以评估这些政策如何与先前存在的扭曲相互作用。首先，在关于市场结构、税收工具和环境政策的各种假设下，构建了经济与消费者、生产者、生产要素和政府的一般均衡模型。其次，对生产进行了实证分析，其中污染被视为对生产的投入。特别是，研究人员侧重于衡量生产中污染和其他投入之间的替代弹性。第一部分将评估预先存在的税收扭曲在设计从不受监管的环境向减少环境排放的最佳变动方面的重要性。它还将调查在这个次优世界中设计最优政策的问题。所使用的建模方法相当灵活，并允许在生产中使用各种排放技术。此外，还探讨了市场结构在环境政策设计中的重要性。一个重要特征是在经济中垄断生产一种或多种商品的可能性。在最初的模型中形成的许多见解在经济学的其他领域也有应用。特别是，分析扩展到考虑与公共接入产品(例如，无线电、电视和蜂窝电话的频率带宽)和可排除的公共产品(例如，国家公园)的次优定价有关的问题。第二部分对生产工艺进行了实证研究。污染被视为对生产的投入，从而衡量污染政策对资本、劳动力、能源和其他材料等其他投入的需求的影响。这是使用人口普查局纵向研究数据库的微观数据以及环境保护局的两个可能的微观排放数据来源来完成的。通过将数据汇总到公司或州的级别，使用灵活的函数形式来估计成本函数。此外，还估计了购买投入品与污染之间的替代弹性。

This research involves a two part project to study a number of environmental policies to assess how these policies interact with pre existing distortions. First, general equilibrium models of the economy with consumers, producers, factors of production, and government are constructed under various assumptions about market structure, tax instruments, and environmental policies. Second, an empirical analysis of production is undertaken in which pollution is treated as an input to production. In particular, the researcher focuses on measuring the elasticity of substitution between pollution and other inputs in production. The first part will assess the importance of pre existing tax distortions in designing optimal movements from an unregulated environment towards reduced environmental emissions. It will also investigate the design of optimal policies in this second best world. The modeling approach used is quite flexible and allows for a variety of emissions technologies in production. In addition the importance of market structure is investigated in designing environmental policy. An important feature is the possibility of monopoly production of one or more goods in the economy. Many of the insights developed in the initial modeling have application in other areas of economics. In particular, the analysis is extended to consider issues associated with second best pricing of common access goods (e.g. frequency bandwidths for radio, television, and cellular telephones) and of excludable public goods (e.g. a national park). In the second part, production technologies are investigated empirically. Pollution is treated as an input to production which, thereby, measures the effect of pollution policies on the demand for other inputs such as capital, labor, energy, and other materials. This is done using micro level data from the Bureau of the Census Longitudinal Research Database along with two possible sources of micro level emissions data from the Environmental Protection Agency. With data aggregated to firm or state levels, cost functions are estimated using a flexible functional form. Also, the elasticity of substitution between purchased inputs and pollution is estimated.