price dumping in intermediate good markets abstract we analyze price dumping and anti dumping duties in the context of a model with a vertical industry structure dumping in the intermediate good market arises from differences in country specific final good production costs the price differential or dumping margin is shown to increase as the productivity difference increases an anti dumping duty designed to reduce the equilibrium price differential has two effects on welfare a welfare loss from reduced final good production and a contrasting gain achieved by producing the lower output level more efficiently

production subsidy and countervailing duties in vertically related markets the hog pork case between canada and the united states this paper analyzes u s countervailing import duties aimed at offsetting the effects of a canadian hog production subsidy approximate countervailing duty formulae for two alternative objectives are derived the permissible range of these duties is illustrated and empirical evidence is provided to restore equilibrium at the presubsidy level in the u s hog market a countervailing duty on hog imports suffices this duty should be less than the unit hog production subsidy to restore equilibrium in both the u s hog and pork markets countervailing duties on both hog and pork imports are required such duties should be less than the unit subsidy and the duty on pork should be less than the duty on hogs

bankable permits for the control of environmental pollution abstract intertemporal trading of emission permits banking is often identified as one of three promising market mechanisms for controlling pollution along with averaging and trading surprisingly the efficiency properties of permit banking systems have not been investigated using a simple optimal control model this paper investigates firms incentives for banking or borrowing emission permits and compares the emission and output streams firms would choose with the socially optimal solution we find that in many cases firms will suboptimally choose excessive damage and output levels in early periods and correspondingly too few in later periods if given the opportunity to freely move emissions between time periods we propose a simple alternative trading scheme we term modified banking that counters this problem and should be no more difficult for an environmental authority to implement than a straigth banking system

why voluntary export restraints are voluntary the paper presents an analysis of the effect upon an oligopolistic equilibrium of introducing a voluntary export restraint ver upon an importing firm a ver set at the free trade level of imports is shown to raise the profits of all firms within the industry the result follows as the imposition of a ver upon a free trade nash price competition forces the domestic firm to become an industry price leader the ver raises industry prices by facilitating collusion and lowers consumer welfare pourquoi les restrictions volontaires d 1 exportation sont volontaires ce memoire presente une analyse des effets de l introduction de restrictions volontaires a l exportation rve sur une entreprise qui importe dans un monde en equilibre oligopolistique on montre que l introduction de rve approximant le niveau des importations en regime de libre echange devrait augmenter les profits de toutes les entreprises dans l industrie cela decoule du fait que l imposition de rve sur un univers de concurrence par les prix a la nash en regime de libre echange force l entreprise domestique a devenir le leader en prix l introduction de rve augmente le niveau des prix de l industrie en facilitant la collusion et de ce fait reduit le niveau de bien etre des consomrnateurs

credibility versus control agency independence and partisan influence in the regulatory state there is a natural tension between theories of party government and theories of regulatory politics whereas effective party government requires that politicians have firm control over public polic

strategic trade policy intellectual property rights protection and north south trade abstract in this paper we analyze the issue of optimal tariffs when the northern and southern firms compete in quantities in an imperfectly competitive northern market and there are potentially varying degrees of intellectual property rights ipr violation by the south ipr violation is reflected through the leakage of technological knowledge spillovers from the northern to the southern firm creating unit cost reduction it is shown that optimal tariffs in this framework are always higher than in the simple duopoly model since they serve here not only as profit shifting devices but also as instruments that influence domestic innovative activity generate scale economies and countervail the ipr violation of the south the other notable difference from the standard duopoly model is that positive tariffs may be desirable from the world welfare point of view

optimum discriminatory tariffs under oligopolistic competition this paper attempts to present a simple cournot model to determine the optimal discriminatory tariff rates when the international market is a homogeneous heterogeneous product market in the model there are two foreign firms located in two different countries competing for sales in a local market when the firms sell a homogeneous product and the home country can impose differential tariffs on imports from different countries then the tariff on the low cost producer should be hgher in particular with constant marginal costs the tariff difference should equal half the cost difference on the other hand if the firms sell differentiated products with symmetric linear demands and technologies then the weaker the degree of product differentiation the greater is the tariff difference compared with the cost difference

policies and international trade agreements on technical compatibility for industries with network externalities abstract the paper considers a country home in which consumers have heterogeneous preferences over ex ante incompatible domestic and imported products and benefit from a network externality we analyze the cases with trade under perfect competition and the international duopoly in which both governments strategically use policies toward compatibility but cannot use conventional trade policies in both cases the equilibrium outcome of the non cooperative game depends upon the strength of the network externality effect and involves either an excessively high equilibrium level of compatibility in combination with either too much or too little trade or very low equilibrium levels of both compatibility and trade the paper concludes with the analysis of the international agreements on policies toward compatibility and evaluates the existing provisions in the wto legal system aimed at minimizing the trade inhibiting impact of standards and regulations in the area of technical compatibility

dumping adjustment costs and uncertainty abstract domestic demand uncertainty in the presence of adjustment costs can cause profit maximizing firms to sell output abroad at a loss firms may dump output at prices below long run marginal and average productions costs with probability arbitrarily close to one the model predicts dumping is particularly likely in process industries such as steel closed form dumping solutions and interesting comparative statics are obtained also the effect of domestic competition on dumping is examined i find domestic competition increases total dumping although a monopolist maximizing output subject to a zero expected profit constraint will dump more than a competitive industry

bureaucratic capacity delegation and political reform thecentraltensionmotivatingcontemporarytheories of delegation from politicians to bureaucrats lies in the potential conflict between the value of bureaucratic expertise on one hand and the desire for political control on the other this tension is well known and has been debated at least since weber s classic work on bureaucracy modern bureaucracies are staffed with individuals who by virtue of rational bureaucratic organization are highly skilled policy experts who in principle should be able to help less knowledgeable politicians achieve their goals however the very skills and expertise that bureaucrats enjoy create the possibility that bureaucrats will usurp the rightful role of politicians in policymaking processes because the way this tension is resolved determines the ultimate compatibility of democracy and bureaucracy existing theories of delegation typically focus on understanding how and to what extent politicians can resolve it 1 in many contexts particularly developing democracies bureaucracy does not fit the weberian characteristics that are assumed in the existing delegation literature the bureaucracies may be staffed with individuals who lack the personal capacity to execute orders effectively the organizational structure may lead to breakdowns within bureaucratic hierarchies making it difficult for senior administrators to control their subordinates departments and ministries may lack basic budgets and resources to undertake implementation actions they may suffer from incentives for

anti dumping and countervailing duties under oligopoly this paper points out an error in a recent paper by dixit 1988 he claims that when there is no domestic production a fully countervailing duty is optimal it is shown here that only a partially countervailing duty is optimal

antidumping protection and r d competition in recent years antidumping protection has spread throughout the world evidence shows that antidumping often targets r d intensive sectors raising a con cern that it may adversely affect worldwide investments in r d we investigate this issue in a model of reciprocal dumping extended to a two stage game in which two firms first choose r d levels and then compete in prices we find that when a single government institutes antidumping law the protected firm decreases investment in r d while the constrained firm invests more when both governments engage in antidumping actions both firms invest more in r d than under free trade jel classification f12 f13

what can we learn from the grand policy experiment lessons from so2 allowance trading stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0895 3309 28199822 2912 3a3 3c69 3awcwlft 3e2 0 co 3b2 tthe journal of economic perspectives is currently published by american economic association your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals aea html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgtue jun 26 16 25 17 2007

trade and trade policy with imperfect competition the case of identical products and free entry abstract this paper analyses intra industry trade between economies containing an imperfectly competitive industry in which firms produce a homogeneous output production is subject to increasing returns to scale and there is free entry and exit of firms trade is shown to unambiguously increase welfare by reducing the degree of monopoly in each market and increasing firm size the effects of differences in technology and endowments on the pattern of trade and welfare are examined import tariffs are shown to raise welfare in the country employing the tariff and the welfare implications of various types of industry subsidy are examined

anti dumping measures as a tool of protectionism a mechanism design approach in this paper we explore the design of optimal incentive compatible anti dumping ad measures when the weight given to the domestic firm s profit in the government s objective function is relatively small it is shown that no ad duty should be imposed if the foreign firm reports its own costs but a constant ad duty should be imposed if the domestic firm reports the foreign firm s cost when this weight is large in either case of reporting the ad duty is a prohibitive tariff the optimal ad measures are modified in the presence of a gatt wto constraint jel classification f12 f13 les mesures anti dumping en tant qu outil de protectionnisme une approche en termes de construction de mecanismes ce memoire examine la construction de mesures optimaales anti dumping ad quandla valence des profits de la firme domestique est faible dans la fonction objective du gouvernement on peut montrer qu aucune mesure ad ne devrait etre imposee si l entreprise etrangere revele ses propres couts mais qu un droit ad constant devrait etre impose si c est la firme domestique qui revele les couts de l entreprise etrangere quand la valence des profits de la firme domestique est grande quelle que soit la source de l information la mesure ad qui s impose est un droit de douane prohibitif les mesures optimales doivent evidemment etre modifiees pour prendre en compte la contrainte engendree par l existence des regles du gatt omc

cap and trade programs under delayed compliance consequences of interim injections of permits virtually every analysis of cap and trade programs assumes that rms must surrender permits as they pollute however no program existing or proposed requires such continual compliance some e g the acid rain program limiting so2 emissions require compliance once a year others e g the regional greenhouse gas initiative limiting co2 emissions require compliance every three years the paths of emissions and permit prices would be invariant to compliance timing holland moore 2013 if the government never injected additional permits between successive compliance dates however virtually all emissions trading programs require such injections through either 1 interim permit auctions or 2 sales from cost containment reserves intended to cap permit prices in such cases analyses which abstract from delayed compliance may mislead policy makers for example a cost containment reserve judged sucient to cap prices at a ceiling over a year may sell out in a single day

political independence accountability and the quality of regulatory decision making recent decades have seen a considerable increase in delegation to independent regulatory agencies which has been justified by reference to the superior performance of these bodies relative to government departments yet the hypothesis that more independent regulators do better work has hardly been tested we examine the link using a comprehensive measure of the quality of work carried out by competition authorities in 30 organisation for economic co operation and development oecd countries and new data on the design of these organizations we find that formal independence has a positive and significant effect on quality contrary to expectations though formal political accountability does not boost regulatory quality and there is no evidence that it increases the effect of independence by reducing the risk of slacking the quality of work is also enhanced by increased staffing more extensive regulatory powers and spillover effects of a more capable bureaucratic system

when to pollute when to abate intertemporal permit use in the los angeles nox market we study intertemporal trading of nitrogen oxides permits in southern california s reclaim program we model reclaim s distinct intertemporal features two overlapping permit cycles and two overlapping compliance cycles in the model competitive equilibrium is cost effective and firms have an incentive to delay abatement from 1994 to 2006 reclaim facilities traded intertemporally by using permits of the opposite cycle we test two theoretical propositions delayed abatement and trading across cycles with a difference in differences estimator and show weak though inconclusive support of the theory the theoretical and empirical results are relevant to cap and trade programs with potential for overlapping permit cycles jel q58

market design in cap and trade programs permit validity and compliance timing abstract cap and trade programs have considerable heterogeneity in permit validity and compliance timing for example permits have different validities across time e g banking borrowing and seasons and space e g zonal restrictions and compliance timing can be annual in overlapping cycles or in multi year periods we discuss nine prominent cap and trade programs along these dimensions and construct a general model of permit validity and compliance timing we derive sufficient conditions under which abatement is invariant to compliance timing i e compliance timing cannot smooth abatement cost shocks under these conditions i expected compliance costs are invariant ii the variance of compliance costs increases with the delayed compliance iii equilibrium prices may not be unique and iv the delayed compliance equilibrium may rely on degenerate prices not determined by marginal abatement costs we demonstrate the model s broad applicability by illustrating different types of temporal permit validity

market uncertainties and cyclical dumping abstract the paper formulates a theory of the firm to analyze the incidence of cyclical dumping in foreign markets in the forms of price discrimination as well as less than marginal cost cyclical dumping arises due to fluctuations in demand in home and foreign markets and the firm s inability to fully adjust its output to these fluctuations the paper analyzes the impacts of various shocks on the current and future incidence of both types of dumping within a unified framework

the economics of pollution permit banking in the context of title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments abstract this paper presents a model of the collective emission permit banking behavior of electricity generating units affected by title iv of the clean air act amendments of 1990 a rigorous treatment of the constraint that pollution permits cannot be borrowed from future allocations is introduced this approach enables an analysis of the impact of future changes in electricity demand regulations and technologies on the present permit price and emissions level the effect of uncertainty on the banking behavior is also explored

quantitative restrictions and tariffs with endogenous firm behavior abstract this paper considers a foreign oligopoly which dominates an importing country s market with its exports of differentiated products it constructs a model where firm behavior is endogenously determined in an infinitely repeated game and it analyzes the impact of trade policies on market conduct and welfare optimal tariffs optimal quotas and optimal tariff quotas are characterized and compared one result is that quotas can enhance competition and increase welfare another result is that quotas can be superior to tariffs finally optimal tariff quotas are welfare superior to either tariffs or quotas alone

emissions trading electricity restructuring and investment in pollution abatement this paper analyzes an emissions trading program that was introduced to reduce smog causing pollution from large stationary sources using variation in state level electricity industry restructuring activity i identify the effect of economic regulation on pollution permit market outcomes there are two main findings first deregulated plants in restructured electricity markets were less likely to adopt more capital intensive environmental compliance options as compared to regulated or publicly owned plants second as a consequence of heterogeneity in electricity market regulations a larger share of the permitted pollution is being emitted in states where air quality problems tend to be more severe jel l51 l94 l98 q53 q58 when the us federal government first began regulating major sources of air pollution in the 1960s the conventional approach to meeting air quality standards involved establishing maxi mum emissions rates or technology based standards for regulated stationary sources however economists have long maintained that an emissions permit market could more efficiently coor dinate pollution abatement activities provided a series of assumptions are met over the past few decades market based cap and trade cat approaches to regulating emissions from industrial point sources have become a centerpiece of environmental regulation in the united states in the theoretical first best permit market equilibrium the total social cost of meeting an emis sions cap is minimized each firm chooses a level of pollution abatement such that its marginal cost of reducing pollution is set equal to the social marginal benefit from emissions reduction in practice preexisting distortions in product markets that are subject to cat regulation may interfere with the emissions permit market s ability to operate efficiently this paper studies the effects of electricity market regulation on permit market outcomes in the context of a major us emissions trading program the nox budget program the recent wave of electricity industry restructuring in the united states has resulted in significant interstate variation in economic regulation consequently facilities in the same cat program face very different economic regu lation and investment incentives in their respective electricity markets whereas rate base regu lated plants are guaranteed to earn a rate of return on prudent investments in pollution abatement equipment deregulated plants operating in restructured electricity markets are offered no such

the non equivalence of tariffs and quantity restraints as rent shifting policies in a differentiated oligopoly with quantity as the strategic variable an optimal tariff can lead to a welfare gain when a quantity restraint is used instead this gain can be offset since the quota induces anticompetitive effects however alternative quantity restraints such as import quotas or voluntary export restraints whether specified in volume or ratio form will influence the strength of the anticompetitive effect in this paper the authors evaluate empirically the degree of nonequivalence between alternative trade instruments and the factors that likely influence it

the market for sulfur dioxide emissions the 1990 clean air act amendments initiated the first large scale use of the tradable permit approach to pollution control the theoretical case for this approach rests on the assumption of an efficient market for emission rights the authors empirical analysis shows that the emission rights market created by the 1990 amendments had become reasonably efficient by mid 1994 they also show that the auctions specified in the amendments to jump start trading had become a small part of the overall market finally the authors demonstrate that the strategic bidding behavior discussed in the literature has had no effect on market prices copyright 1998 by american economic association

dumping at less than marginal cost abstract the traditional analysis of dumping in an export market treats the term merely as a synonym for price discrimination in an international context crucially it does not predict that goods will be sold overseas at price less than marginal cost this paper explores the possibility that dumping can occur in the more obvious lay sense of selling at less than marginal cost it suggests three reasons why this may occur in circumstances of uncertainty pursuance of managerial goals and strategic entry deterrence in the first of these the traditional prediction of reduced surplus for domestic consumers is no longer assured

an econometric analysis of telecom competition privatization and regulation in africa and latin america this paper explores the effects of privatization competition and regulation on telecommunications performance in 30 african and latin american countries from 1984 through 1997 fixed effects regressions reveal that competition measured by mobile operators not owned by the incumbent is correlated with increases in the per capita number of mainlines payphones and connection capacity and with decreases in the price of local calls privatization combined with an independent regulator is positively correlated with telecom performance measures privatization alone however is associated with few benefits and is negatively correlated with connection capacity

the economics of career concerns part ii application to missions and accountability of government agencies the paper uses a simple multitask career concern model in order to analyse the incentives of government agencies officials incentives are impaired by the agency pursuing multiple missions a lack of focus is even more problematic in the case of fuzzy missions that is when outsiders are uncertain about the exact nature of the missions actually pursued by the agency consequently agencies pursuing multiple missions receive less autonomy the paper further shows that professionalization creates a sense of mission for the agency and that the specialization of officials raises their incentives last the paper compares its predictions with the stylized facts on government bureaucracies 1999 the review of economic studies limited

up the average cost curve inefficient entry and the new protectionism abstract a two country model is developed in which each country produces one good with increasing returns the goods being perfect or imperfect substitutes with cournot nash behavior and free entry certain restrictive trade policies have effects opposite to their favorable effect under noentry assumptions import tariffs and export subsidies lead to inefficient entry that raises rather than decreases the average production cost of and price charge by the domestic industry with negative welfare consequences we argue that these predictions of our model are closely consistent with extensive canadian data on entry exit and firms responses to trade liberalization

capital subsidies and countervailing duties in oligopolistic industries abstract under gatt countries are allowed to impose countervailing duties to offset foreign subsidies however gatt rules limit the amount of duty to the amount of the subsidy this paper examines a generalized model of imperfect competition with capital subsidies and shows the conditions under which a countervailing duty will offset the effect of the subsidy on exports also conditions are specified under which exports will increase despite the imposition of the maximum tariff under gatt in addition the paper considers whether profit shifting motives for a subsidy still exist even when this maximum duty is anticipated

anti dumping and countervailing duties under oligopoly abstract this paper constructs a conjectural variations model of international oligopoly in which the home country s optimal policy responses to the foreign government s subsidies and foreign firms dumping can be calculated some theoretical support is found for tariffs that countervail part of the foreign export subsidy the optimal fraction depends on the size of own and cross effects in demand and on the extent of market competition however no normative case is found for anti dumping duties

the welfare effects of allowance banking in emissions trading programs permitting allowance banking in emissions trading programs can reduce expected compliance costs by giving capped firms flexibility to adjust the time path of abatement and to hedge against future uncertainty recent literature suggests that this compliance cost dividend is significant fell and morgenstern environ resour econ 47 275 297 2010 allowance banking may yield an environmental dividend a if the growth rate of marginal damages from emissions is less than the discount rate and b if emissions are lower in the short run as firms bank permits for use in later periods a discrete stochastic dynamic programming model is considered to simulate the two dividends of allowance banking in the context of the most recent federal united states greenhouse gas cap and trade legislation simulation results show that under a range of parameter values the environmental dividend has the same order of magnitude as the compliance cost dividend under the central set of parameters allowance banking increases expected present value of benefits by about 350 million dollars per year of the program the environmental dividend however is completely eliminated if capped firms can borrow permits from future periods without limit

dumping as a signal of innovation in the r d intensive industries where technologies change rapidly an innovative foreign firm may need to export greater than normal quantities to signal the level of the new technology it possesses we find that such actions lead to sales below cost if the foreign firm has a relatively poor reputation for innovation has a sufficiently high discount factor or possesses a new technology that significantly cuts its cost we also show that antidumping reduces the costs of signaling benefits the home firm and may raise the profit to the foreign firm in the pre duty period

pollution permit markets with intertemporal trading and asymmetric information abstract we consider the problem of determining the permit discount rate in pollution permit markets in which permits may be traded over time and polluting firms have better information about their abatement costs than does the regulator we show that the preferred permit discount rate may be greater than or less than the money discount rate we also consider whether or not the regulator should allow intertemporal trading to take place allowing intertemporal trading lowers social costs when the slope of the marginal damage function is less than the slope of the aggregate marginal abatement cost function

business cycles and emission trading with banking abstract we propose an emission cap adjustment policy for an emission trading system ets that allows banking of allowances for later use and faces business cycle uncertainty the forward looking banking decisions cause a commitment problem with respect to regulator s next period allowance supply decision we tackle the commitment problem by focusing on the markov equilibrium of the policy the equilibrium policy has a surprisingly simple structure combining features from both price and quantity instruments the regulator s ability to choose a new cap for each period does not render banking obsolete but on the contrary makes banking an integral part of the equilibrium policy using data from the eu ets to calibrate the model we solve the markov equilibrium policy for the case of carbon emissions regulation and compare markov policies with and without the possibility to bank allowances a counterfactual analysis of the eu ets during the period of 2009 2013 shows that the optimal markov policy would have led to a steadier allowance price level and a stricter emission regulation than what was actually observed in the eu ets

the effect of domestic antidumping law in the presence of foreign monopoly abstract we analyze the effects of antidumping law when utilized by competitive domestic petitioners against a foreign monopolist the monopolist reduces the cost of holding excess capacity in periods of slack foreign demand by dumping on the domestic market antidumping law reduces trade volume both directly under successful petitions and indirectly when no petition is filed by causing the monopolist to alter its capacity and the allocation of that capacity between markets finally we consider the effects of self enforcing agreements in which the domestic industry agrees not to file in exchange for a promise that the foreign monopolist limit exports

carbon markets 15 years after kyoto lessons learned new challenges abstract carbon markets are substantial and they are expanding there are many lessons from market experiences over the past eight years there should be fewer free allowances better management of market sensitive information and a recognition that trading systems require adjustments that have consequences for market participants and market confidence moreover the emerging market architecture features separate emissions trading systems serving distinct jurisdictions and a variety of other types of policies exist alongside the carbon markets this situation is in sharp contrast to the top down integrated global trading architecture envisioned 15 years ago by the designers of the kyoto protocol and raises a suite of new questions in this new architecture jurisdictions with emissions trading have to decide how whether and when to link with one another stakeholders and policymakers must confront how to measure the comparability of efforts among markets as well as relative to a variety of other polic

domestic uncertainty and foreign dumping this paper investigates the links between uncertainty in a firm s home market and below cost dumping in foreign markets the form that uncertainty takes is shown to determine the likelihood and expected magnitude of dumping a number of forms of uncertainty are indicated to impart a pro dumping bias to firms output decisions a consequence is that risk neutral firms may plan to sell some output abroad even though firms know with certainty that exports can never cover marginal cost

conjectural variations and location theory abstract imperfectly competitive markets such as those involving spatial separation of producers and consumers are characterized by interactions between competing firms actions call forth reactions and the possible reactions form an important part of the information set that should be used to determine the initial actions one method for dealing with this is the conjectoral variation approach despite some shortcomings this methodology sheds considerable light on decision making in the space economy equally importantly it sheds light on more general microeconomies modelled as spatial analogs this paper shows that conjectural variations and the nature of competition between rival firms do indeed matter in location choice and more generally in product design in particular we shall be concerned with showing how the conjectured responses of rival firms affect their desire to agglomerate

efficient pollution regulation getting the prices right this paper argues for efficient environmental regulations that equate the mar ginal damage of pollution to marginal abatement costs across space the paper estimates the source specific marginal damages of air pollution and calculates the welfare gain from making the current sulfur dioxide allowance trading pro gram for power plants more efficient the savings from using trading ratios based on marginal damages are between 310 and 940 million per year the potential savings from setting aggregate emissions efficiently and from includ ing more sources of air pollution are many times higher jel h23 q53 q58

the global diffusion of regulatory agencies channels of transfer and stages of diffusion the autonomous regulatory agency has recently become the appropriate model of governance across countries and sectors the dynamics of this process are captured in the authors data set which covers the establishment of agencies in 48 countries and 15 sectors for the period 1966 2007 adopting a diffusion approach to explain this broad process of institutional change the authors explore the role of countries and sectors as sources of institutional transfer at different stages of the diffusion process they demonstrate how the restructuring of national bureaucracies unfolds via four different channels of institutional transfer the results challenge theoretical approaches that overemphasize the national dimension in global diffusion and are insensitive to the stages of the diffusion process further advance in study of diffusion depends the authors assert on the ability to apply both cross sectoral and cross national analysis to the same research design and to incorporate channels of transfer with di

permit market auctions with allowance reserves this article investigates pollution permit auctions that incorporate allowance reserves in these auctions the sale of a fixed quantity of permits is supplemented by an additional permit reserve this reserve automatically releases permits if a sufficiently high price is triggered the main justifications for implementing an allowance reserve are to reduce price volatility as well as assisting in cost containment we show paradoxically that incorporating an allowance reserve into a permit auction can decrease firms payoffs increase the clearing price and increase compliance costs this has implications for all major cap and trade markets including the us regional greenhouse gas initiative

policy shocks and market based regulations evidence from the renewable fuel standard the renewable fuel standard mandates large increases in u s biofuel consumption and is implemented using tradable compliance credits known as rins in early 2013 rin prices soared causing the regulator to propose reducing future mandates we estimate empirically the effect of three policy shocks that reduced the expected mandates in 2013 we find that the largest of these shocks decreased the value of the fuel industry s 2013 compliance obligation by 7 billion we then study the effects of the shocks on commodity markets and the market value of publicly traded biofuel firms results show that the burden of the mandate reductions fell primarily on advanced biofuel firms and commodity markets of the marginal compliance biofuel we argue that the policy shocks reduced the incentive to invest in the technologies required to meet the future objectives of the rfs and discuss alternative policy designs to address the problems that arose in 2013

harvest efficiency and fishery discards under harvest uncertainty and trading restrictions abstract we study harvesting efficiency and the problem of discards under harvest uncertainty in a fishery that is managed with quotas with only idiosyncratic harvest uncertainty we show that frictionless post harvest quota trade can achieve full efficiency and eliminate quota overage discards completely in the absence of such trade we deduce an ad valorem tax subsidy that eliminates discards while delivering a desired aggregate harvest target alternatively we show that a hybrid policy i e a combined quota and landings fee can implement a manager s aggregate target harvest level efficiently and without discards when harvest shocks in addition have a fishery wide common component post harvest quota trading per se cannot eliminate discards policy intervention in the form of either landing taxes or a hybrid scheme is needed given the prevalence of trading restrictions in many quota managed fisheries worldwide our paper offers important policy advice

why can t countervailing duties deter export subsidization abstract this paper shows that in a duopoly model of international market competition threatened imposition of countervailing duties by a domestic country generally deters a foreign country from subsidizing its exports to the former to explain the coexistence of export subsidization and the gatt conform countervailing duty measures factors such as delay in retaliation the gatt constraint on the amount of countervailing duties and voluntary export restraints must be considered we find that these factors lessen the efficacy of countervailing duty retaliation and therefore fail to deter export subsidization