a principal agent problem with heterogeneous demand distributions for a carbon capture and storage system abstract mechanism design problems optimize contract offerings from a principal to different types of agents who have private information about their demands for a product or a service we study the implications of uncertainty in agents demands on the principal s contracts specifically we consider the setting where agents demands follow heterogeneous distributions and the principal offers a menu of contracts stipulating quantities and transfer payments for each demand distribution we present analytical solutions for the special case when there are two distributions each taking two discrete values as well as a method for deriving analytical solutions from numerical solutions we describe one application of the model in carbon capture and storage systems to demonstrate various types of optimal solutions and to obtain managerial insights

optimal nonuniform pricing with generalized consumer choice a frequent assumption in nonuniform pricing models is that local maximizing conditions are met exactly once for each purchasing consumer no consumer can be indifferent between two nonadjacent usage levels each consumer then responds to a change in marginal price only by incrementally reducing her usage more realistically maximizing conditions are sometimes twice met for some interior users who can be indifferent between nonadjacent usage levels and may therefore jump discretely if marginal prices change at either level the author derives a monopolist s generalized price schedule under these circumstances and shows that marginal price may fall below marginal cost copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

the role of capital and labour in shaping the environmental effects of fiscal stimulus abstract although the macroeconomic consequences of short term fiscal stimulation packages have been thoroughly analysed in the literature still relatively little is known about their environmental effects we discuss an important channel through which short run expansionary fiscal policy influences greenhouse gas emissions we show that fiscal policy exerts its impact not only by increasing general level of economic activity but also by changing the composition of factors of production capital and labour using the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of economy we demonstrate that fiscal expansion results in a shift from capital intensive to more labour intensive technologies our panel study proves that the latter tends to be associated with lower emissions of greenhouse gases per unit of production hence our analysis demonstrates that an extensive use of fiscal stimulus during recessions can significantly reduce the environmental burden of the additional units of gdp

equilibrium properties of auctions and alternative procedures for allocating transferable permits abstract this paper examines the equilibrium properties of a range of auctions and related procedures placing emphasis on the types of procedures that are likely to be of special interest in environmental management applications nash equilibrium properties are first derived for a very general class of auctions for multiple homogeneous or heterogeneous objects or permits next it is shown that given appropriate assumptions three broad classes of public allocation procedures that do not generate revenues for the government would yield participants equal expected profits these classes are 1 incentive compatible auctions where bidders receive equal lump sum refunds 2 non incentive compatible procedures where refunds are a function of participants bids and 3 free initial distribution of permits on a lump sum basis followed by trading via a competitive market the applicability of the general results is then demonstrated by examining the particular non incentive compatible fair division procedure originally suggested by knaster finally implications of the theoretical results for applications including the allocation of transferable discharge permits and water rights are discussed

the role of firm size in bilateral bargaining a study of the cable television industry we examine the effect of buyer merger on bilateral negotiations between a supplier and n buyers merger may have bargaining effects in addition to the usual efficiency effects the effect of merger on the buyers bargaining position depends on the curvature of the supplier s gross surplus function merger enhances worsens the buyers bargaining position if the function is concave convex based on a panel of advertising revenue in the cable television industry our estimates indicate that the gross surplus function for suppliers of program services is convex this result suggests that cable operators integrate horizontally to realize efficiency gains rather than to enhance their bargaining position vis a vis program suppliers

investigating environmental kuznets curve from an energy intensity perspective empirical evidence from china abstract this study pioneers investigating the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis and its possible regional differential characteristics in china based on 2003 2017 years of provincial panel data this research employs panel smooth transition auto regression pstr model to analyze the impact of income levels on environmental pollution and identify the ekc threshold of energy intensity then 30 chinese provinces were categorized by energy intensity to examine the inter provincial and interregional differences in the ekc threshold of energy intensity rather than the traditional threshold of income the results indicate that china s pollution emissions and energy intensities show a stepwise decreasing pattern from the western region to the eastern region in addition the impact of income levels on pollution emissions is non linear and the critical value of energy intensity is 0 9168 between the high and low regimes an inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve is accepted for energy intensity with 0 7670 as its threshold value when the energy intensity is higher lower than the threshold value the income elasticity of pollution emission is positive negative the more developed provinces and municipalities mainly in the eastern region are proved to exceed the threshold than the provinces in the central and western regions within the sample period given these findings this study further divides china s provinces into eco friendly low pollution and high pollution provinces and accordingly the most important policy recommendations were discussed for policy makers and researchers this research can provide a new insight to investigate countries with unbalanced development levels within and a reference for environmental governance policies in sub regions

pollution and economic growth evidence from central and eastern european countries abstract we investigate the relationships between pollution and growth in eleven central and eastern european cee countries aggregate results robust to different estimators and control variables reveal an increasing nonlinear link between gdp and co2 for the group of cee countries however at a disaggregated country level the relationship between gdp and co2 is characterized by much diversity among cee countries namely n shaped inverted n u shaped inverted u monotonic or no statistical link thus despite an aggregated upward trend some cee countries managed to secure both higher gdp and lower co2 emissions from a policy perspective eu policymakers could pay more attention to these countries and amend the current unique environmental policy to account for country heterogeneities in order to support economic growth without damaging the environment

revisiting the relation between economic growth and the environment a global assessment of deforestation pollution and carbon emission abstract the un s sustainable development goals for 2030 aim on one hand at inclusive growth and eradicating poverty and on the other at preserving environments the relation between development and the environment has been studied extensively since the 1990s documenting inverted u shaped relations between per capita income and indicators of environmental degradation this paper revisits the issue with machine learning techniques and novel disaggregate data to model these relationships heterogeneously across economic indicators results suggest that development gradually improves the efficiency of consuming the earth s nonrenewable resources but increased efficiency alone is not sufficient to offset growth in scale development shifts reliance on one nonrenewable source to another and on average we find successive inverted u shapes in deforestation air pollution and carbon intensities followed by a j shape in per capita carbon output local economic circumstances further determine the shape amplitude and location of tipping points in environmental output the general implications of the estimated dynamics are explored by extrapolating environmental output to 2030 under simplistic scenario s the results are a reminder that immediate and sustained global efforts are required to preserve our environment

energy investment economic growth and carbon emissions in china empirical analysis based on spatial durbin model abstract the international community has reached a consensus on preventing the global climate from deterioration by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere energy industry is a key field for greenhouse gas emission and investment in the energy industry plays a crucial part in promoting the low carbon development of china s energy industry energy investment can effectively break the high carbon lock in effect of energy industry and achieve the low carbon development of energy industry by guiding regulating and gathering social funds into the field of cleaner production and the field of low carbon technology based on the unified framework of energy economy and environment this article takes 30 provinces in china as the research object and constructs a spatial econometric model to investigate the impact of energy investment and economic growth on carbon emission reduction the results indicate that both energy investment and economic growth are responsible for the increase of china s provincial co2 emissions but their driving mechanisms are significantly different furthermore the increase of carbon emissions in adjacent provinces will bring about the increase of local carbon emissions through spatial spillover effects based on these findings the corresponding countermeasures and policy suggestions are put forward

environmental kuznets curves new evidence on both panel and country level co2 emissions using data on per capita co2 emissions and per capita real gdp from fifteen countries spanning the period 1960 2013 this paper tests the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc using both panel based and time series based methodological approaches of cointegration given that the ekc hypothesis postulates an inverted u shaped relationship between emissions and output the study tests for cointegration between per capita co2 emissions per capita real gdp and the squared values of per capita real gdp the evidence from panel cointegration methodologies is mixed this result might arise due to time dependence of cointegrating coefficients the time varying cointegration approaches provide strong evidence in favor of time varying cointegration parameters furthermore based on the quantile cointegration approach the results indicate that the ekc hypothesis holds in 12 out of the 15 countries however even for these three countries the ekc hypothesis seems to hold at certain quantiles

estimating demand for local telephone service with asymmetric information and optional calling plans in this paper i study the theoretical and econometric implications of agents uncertainty concerning their future consumption when a monopolist offers them either a unique mandatory nonlinear tariff or a choice in advance from a menu of optional two part tariffs agents uncertainty is resolved through individual and privately known shocks to their types in such a situation the principal may screen agents according to their ex ante or ex post type by offering either a menu of optional tariffs or a standard nonlinear schedule the theoretical implications of the model are used to evaluate a tariff experiment run by south central bell in two cities in kentucky in 1986 the empirical approach explicitly accounts for the existence of informational asymmetries between local telephone users and the monopolist leading to different nested econometric specifications under symmetric and asymmetric information the empirical evidence suggests that there exists a significant asymmetry of information between consumers and the monopolist under both tariff regimes all expected welfare components failed to increase with the introduction of optional tariffs for the estimated value of the parameters copyright 2002 wiley blackwell

is aggregate domestic consumption spending adcs per capita determining co2 emissions in south africa a new perspective aggregate domestic consumption spending is one of the prime drivers of economic progress that facilitates the process of industrialization international trade and innovation but its effect on the environment remains underresearched this paper proposes a novel framework to explain the impact of aggregate domestic consumption spending per capita adcsp on carbon dioxide emissions co2e in south africa using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl technique the results indicated that the adcsp determines co2e in the short run sr and long run lr from adcsp to carbon intensity adcsp ci estimations it was observed that an increase 1 in adcsp increases co2e in both the lr 0 31 and sr 0 22 furthermore the nardl estimations showed that the lr effects of positive shocks in the adcsp on co2e are comparatively stronger than the sr effects the paper offers important policy implications for academics theorists and policymakers

product variety and the inefficiency of monopoly in this note the authors extend earlier work that examined the distortions in product quality created by a monopolist selling to consumers with different and unobservable tastes when consumers have differing absolute and marginal willingness to pay for quality they demonstrate that the monopolist may find it profitable to distort quality either at the low end or at the high end of a quality array this latter result has not previously been demonstrated the authors also provide intuitive comparative statics and discuss policy implications copyright 1988 by the london school of economics and political science

the principal agent relationship with an informed principal ii common values in many circumstances a principal may have relevant private information when she proposes a contract to an agent we analyze such a principal agent relationship as a noncooperative game the principal proposes a contract which is accepted or rejected by the agent who for most of our analysis has no private information the contract is executed if accepted otherwise the reservation allocation takes effect this allocation may be determined by a pre existing contract which the principal by her proposal is attempting to renegotiate or it may simply be the no trade point in this paper we assume that the principal s information directly affects the agent s payoff before solving the game we discuss pareto efficiency with asymmetric information we define an incentive compatible allocation to be weakly interim efficient wie if there exists no alternative incentive compatible allocation that both parties prefer for all possible beliefs that the agent might have about the principal s private information type we show that any wie allocation is interim efficient ie for some beliefs the rothschild stiglitz wilson rsw allocation relative to the reservation allocation l is the allocation that maximizes the payoff of each type of principal within the class of incentive compatible allocations that guarantee the agent at least the utility he gets from a irrespective of his beliefs about the principal s type the equilibrium set of the contract proposal game consists of the allocations that weakly pareto dominate the rsw allocation thus there is a unique equilibrium outcome if and only if the latter is ie and the equilibrium outcome is the rsw allocation itself after characterizing the equilibrium allocations we study those that are renegotiation proof when either the principal or the agent leads the renegotiation we then compare our contract proposal game which is a signaling model with its screening counterpart we conclude by extending our results to the case in which the agent as well as the principal has private information under the assumption of quasi linear preferences

the environmental kuznets curve in the oecd 1870 2014 carbon dioxide co2 emissions play an important role in global warming consequently studying the relationship between co2 emissions and economic development is important especially when viewed from a historical perspective we test the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for a panel of 20 oecd nations dating back to the first globalization boom in the nineteenth century utilising recently developed panel data estimators that account for cross sectional dependence and parameter heterogeneity for the period 1870 to 2014 we find support for the ekc hypothesis for the panel as a whole with three of our preferred four estimators with turning points in income per capita that lie between 18 955 and 89 540 in 1990 us country specific results however only provide mixed support for the ekc hypothesis specifically we find evidence of an ekc for nine of the 20 countries with five exhibiting a traditional inverted u shaped relationship three exhibiting an n shaped relationship and one an inverted n shaped relationship

symbiosis vs crowding out the interaction of formal and informal credit markets in developing countries abstract it is a common observation in many developing countries that enterprises are active borrowers in both formal and informal credit markets we propose a model in which the formal sector s superior ability in deposit mobilization is traded off against the informational advantage that lenders in the informal sector enjoy the formal sector can screen borrowers by providing only partial financing for projects thereby forcing borrowers to resort to the informal sector for the remainder of the loan we use the model to predict how the market structure responds to changes in the environment and we consider the policy implications of various forms of government intervention

estimating the environment kuznets curve hypothesis evidence from latin america and the caribbean countries this study explores the effect of economic growth gdp renewable energy consumption re and financial development fd on co2 emission co2 in latin america and caribbean countries to achieve this goal a panel co2 model was built over the period 1980 2010 the kao cointegration test results revealed that the variables are cointegrated the fully modified ols fmols results indicated an inverted u shape relationship between co2 and gdp thus confirming the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis furthermore fmols results also revealed that fd can improve environmental quality by its negative long run effect on co2 however re has no long run effect on co2 indicating that the re does not contribute to co2 reduction the vecm granger causality results revealed feedback causality between gdp re fd and co2 in both short and long run additionally granger causality results also revealed that re gdp and fd can be a good solution to reduce environmental damage since they have a causal effect on co2 this study shows the investigated countries should increase their banking loans on green energy energy efficiency and energy saving projects to reduce environmental damage in addition the above recommendation can increase the contribution of renewable energy in reducing environmental damage

the relationship between energy demand and real gdp growth rate the role of price asymmetries and spatial externalities within 34 countries across the globe abstract the aim of this paper is to empirically explore the relationship between energy demand and real gross domestic product gdp growth and to investigate the role of regional externalities on per capita final energy consumption fec in 34 countries during the period from 2005 to 2013 the paper utilizes a dynamic panel generalized method of moments dpggm approach and spatial econometric techniques in order to analyse the effect of real gdp growth rate on fec through an error correction model ecm and to examine clustered patterns of energy consumption the results show that a the demand is elastic both in the industrial and the household services sectors b electricity and natural gas are demand substitutes c the relationship between real gdp growth rate and per capita energy consumption exhibits an inverted u shape for all the sample countries under scrutiny 34 countries eurozone and eu28 but not for all the employed sectors of the economy d price electricity and gas and gdp growth asymmetries are supported from the employed parametric tests and e distance does not affect per capita fec but economic neighbours have a strong positive effect

robust inference concerning recent trends in us environmental quality understanding trends in environmental quality is important for individuals and policymakers typically trends in environmental quality are determined solely through comparisons of unconditional or conditional mean pollution levels however reaching unambiguous conclusions on the basis of only the first moment of the unconditional or conditional distribution is problematic since it ignores what is occurring in different regions of the distribution even relying on indices that incorporate both mean and variance is suspect to the extent that relative rankings are not typically robust to index choice addressing these concerns we adapt recent developments in the stochastic dominance literature to test for unambiguous relations between current and past distributions of toxic releases using epa data from 1988 1999 we find statistically significant evidence that the unconditional 1999 distributions of air land underground and total toxic releases dominate in a first degree sense their respective 1988 distributions while some of this improvement is explained by economic growth pollution net of income improved over the sample period as well finally we document robust differences in the distribution of pollution across regions in the us copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

how economic growth affects emissions an investigation of the environmental kuznets curve in portuguese and spanish economic activity sectors abstract it is a disquieting reality that increased economic growth for many years now in the western world is at odds with environmental degradation in this paper the relationship between economic growth and environmental variables is analyzed under two non linear specifications a quadratic and a cubic specification the study is conducted for portugal and spain in the period 1975 2012 using data for 13 sectors gva is used as proxy for income while energy use and carbon dioxide account for environmental degradation there is evidence for an inverted u shaped ekc however there are also other inverted n shaped functions that explain the relationship between economic growth and emissions altogether empirical results do indicate particular differences between portuguese and spanish sectors the results are of interest not only for researchers but also for policy makers political mitigation measures are also analyzed

nonlinear pricing of information goods this paper analyzes optimal pricing for information goods under incomplete information when both unlimited usage fixed fee pricing and usage based pricing are feasible and administering usage based pricing may involve transaction costs it is shown that offering fixed fee pricing in addition to a nonlinear usage based pricing scheme is always profit improving in the presence of nonzero transaction costs and there may be markets in which a pure fixed fee is optimal this implies that the optimal pricing strategy for information goods is almost never fully revealing moreover it is proved that the optimal usage based pricing schedule is independent of the value of the fixed fee a result that simplifies the simultaneous design of pricing schedules considerably and provides a simple procedure for determining the optimal combination of fixed fee and nonlinear usage based pricing the introduction of fixed fee pricing is shown to increase both consumer surplus and total surplus the differential effects of setup costs fixed transaction costs and variable transaction costs on pricing policy are described these results suggest a number of managerial guidelines for designing pricing schedules for instance in nascent information markets firms may profit from low fixed fee penetration pricing but as these markets mature the optimal pricing mix should expand to include a wider range of usage based pricing options minimum fees quantity discounts and adoption levels across the different pricing schemes are characterized strategic pricing responses to changes in market characteristics are described and the implications of the paper s results for bundling and vertical differentiation of information goods are discussed

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

hiring and leasing with nonlinear prices this paper examines the problem of a monopolist setting an optimal nonlinear pricing schedule in the face of consumers of unknown type who arrive randomly over time and self select a choice of hire period the major determinant of pricing policy is the customer arrival distribution with the overall level of price higher than in the atemporal yield management nonuniform pricing solution by a margin which increases with the average frequency with which potential customers arrive by contrast the solution is generally fairly insensitive to variations in the time rate of discount although there is a tendency for the rate of price discount to increase with increases in the time discount rate

information exchange and distributional implications of price discrimination with internet marketing in agriculture a price discrimination model is proposed to explain why firms provide extraneous information on internet sites selling agricultural inputs whether an informative site is offered depends on price discrimination potential which depends on how much farmers reveal heterogeneity by internet behavior price discrimination is greater if information benefits are negatively correlated with farm size or other characteristics explaining why extraneous not product related information is offered on internet sales sites price discrimination adversely affects some farmers but may be beneficial on average because it generates free information outcomes depend on whether internet users are aware of price differentials on the basis of clickstream information

the role of trade and fdi for co2 emissions in turkey nonlinear relationships abstract this paper examines the effects of foreign trade and foreign direct investment fdi on co 2 emissions in turkey we consider linear and nonlinear ardl models and find significant asymmetric effects of exports imports and fdi on co 2 emissions per capita however fdi has no statistically significant long run effects in the long run decreases in exports reduce co 2 emissions per capita but increases in exports have no statistically significant effects increases in imports push up co 2 emissions per capita while decreases in imports have no long run effects on the other hand co 2 intensity which measures co 2 emissions per unit of energy is not influenced by exports and imports nor by fdi instead it is affected positively by financial development and urbanization also we find that an environmental kuznets curve is present for both co 2 measures so that increases in real gdp per capita have led to reductions in co 2 emissions for at least the most recent decade controlling for other confounding factors furthermore the sectoral shares of co 2 emissions in total co 2 emissions change asymmetrically with foreign trade for two of four sectors with export increases leading to lower co 2 shares and imports having the opposite effect

on the relationships between co2 emissions energy consumption and income the importance of time variation abstract the environment that governs the relationships between energy consumption carbon dioxide co2 emissions and gross domestic product gdp in the g7 countries changes over time due to variations in economic growth regulatory policy and technology using a novel approach that may detect causalities when the time constant hypothesis is rejected we find significant time varying granger causalities among the variables under consideration there is bidirectional causality between gdp and energy consumption for japan unidirectional causality running from gdp to energy consumption for italy and unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to gdp for the resource country canada moreover the results also show a bidirectional time varying causality between energy consumption and co2 emissions for the united states and causality from energy consumption to co2 emissions for france finally while we find significant time varying causalities running from gdp to co2 emissions for italy and japan the finding of inverted n shaped curves italy and japan lends no support to the traditional environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for these countries it implies that environmental policy and economic growth should go hand in hand other policy implications of the empirical results have been proposed

investigating the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis in vietnam this study investigates the existence of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis in vietnam during the period 1981 2011 to realize the goals of this study a pollution model was established applying the autoregressive distributed lag ardl methodology the results revealed that the pollution haven hypothesis does exist in vietnam because capital increases pollution in addition imports also increase pollution which indicates that most of vietnam s imported products are energy intensive and highly polluted however exports have no effect on pollution which indicates that the level of exports is not significant enough to affect pollution moreover fossil fuel energy consumption increases pollution while renewable energy consumption has no significant effect in reducing pollution furthermore labor force reduces pollution since most of vietnam s labor force is in the agricultural and services sectors which are less energy intensive than the industrial sector based on the obtained results the ekc hypothesis does not exist because the relationship between gdp and pollution is positive in both the short and long run

optimal nonlinear pricing by a monopolist with information ambiguity we consider the optimal nonlinear pricing by an ambiguity averse monopolist the monopolist s subjective belief about the distribution of buyers is described by contamination of an additive probability we find that under a maxmin utility decision rule and with a continuum of buyers ambiguity aversion leads to bunching at the bottom in the optimal contract and the distortion at the bottom is reduced other high valuation buyers are offered the same quantity as in the case without ambiguity but they get a greater discount

price discrimination through refund contracts in airlines this paper shows how an airline monopoly uses refundable and non refundable tickets to screen consumers who are uncertain about their travel our theoretical model predicts that the difference between these two fares diminishes as individual demand uncertainty is resolved using an original data set from u s airline markets we find strong evidence supporting our model price discrimination opportunities through refund contracts decline as the departure date nears and individuals learn about their demand

the co2 growth nexus revisited a nonparametric analysis for the g7 economies over nearly two centuries abstract using a long dataset and some recently popularized nonparametric econometric techniques this study revisits the nexus between economic growth and carbon dioxide co 2 emissions for the g7 countries over nearly two centuries the use of nonparametric modelling is warranted by the fact that long historical time series are often subject to structural breaks and other forms of nonlinearity over the course of time we employ nonparametric cointegration and causality tests along with the cross validated local linear regression analysis and validate the existence of the environmental kuznets curve in six of the g7 countries canada france germany italy u k and the u s and the only exception is japan our empirical analysis also finds co 2 emissions and economic growth to be cointegrated and closely interrelated in the granger sense our results are robust and highlight the nonlinear causal relationship between the two variables

revenue implications of money creation under leviathan most governments possess a monopoly franchise in the creation of money economists provide an analytical justification for this institutional arrangement either in terms of the use of monetary aggregates for macro economic stabilization or in terms of the alleged inability of competitive markets to generate tolerably efficient monetary results any complete case for the government s monetary monopoly must however depend on a comparison of market and political arrangements a comparison that requires predictions about how governments are likely to behave once a monopoly franchise is assigned similarly such predictions are crucial in evaluating restrictions that might be imposed on the government s exercise of its money creation power in designing a monetary constitution in the analysis of political arrangements the revenue implications of the money creation power are probably more significant than considerations of either macro economic stability or optimality in the money supply although those revenue implications are incidental to demonstrating the nature of market failure in monetary arrangements they are fundamental in understanding how the government might exploit a monopoly in money creation once granted our interest in the revenue effects of money creation stems from a broader study of constitutional restrictions on the revenueraising authority of government see our book the power to create money is naturally encompassed in this restrictions on the revenue raising power must embody restrictions on the power to create money consequently the fiscal constitution has important implications for the monetary constitution in this paper we examine both the revenue implications of money creation and desirable consitutional restrictions on the money creation power within the context of a specific model of political processes

optimal labour contracts under asymmetric information an introduction the review of economic studies has instituted a new series of lectures to be given annually by a younger british economist at the association of university teachers of economics meetings the choice of lecturer is determined by a panel whose members are currently professors hahn mirrlees and nobay this paper is a revised version of the first lecture in the series it was presented at the aute meeting held at the university of surrey in april 1982 and was refereed in the usual way mak

cost functions in non linear pricing abstract this paper compares the optimal selling strategies with symmetric and asymmetric information when monopolist s cost function depends both on individual and aggregate production we show how standard underproduction and higher exclusion with incomplete information are affected

monopoly with incomplete information recent theoretical research on principal agent relationships has emphasized incentive problems that arise when the parties involved are constrained by either asymmetric information or their inability to monitor each other s actions here we concentrate on the former constraint and consider the case of a single principal the monopolist the main contribution is to show that under a separability assumption strong conclusions can be drawn about the nature of optimal incentive schemes although the primary focus is on optimal quantity discounts in a monopolized market the results also shed light on related topics such as optimal income taxation and commodity bundling

agricultural productivity under socialism abstract this paper comprises an analysis of the causes of the disappointing development of agricultural productivity under state socialism stress is laid on the underlying theoretical explanation the inadequacies of marxist agrarian theory these are excessive stress on economies of scale exaggerated expectations concerning the gains from abolishing private ownership and failure to foresee the costs of the one nation one factory model use is made of empirical material about the ussr china and other countries

optimal nonuniform prices we consider optimal nonuniform pricing schedules where the price depends upon the amount purchased such schedules are regularly used by public utilities and other services welfare optimal nonuniform prices are related to the theory of optimal uniform prices developed by ramsey we characterize situations in which upward or downward discontinuities in pricing schedules are optimal our results are applicable to a number of related problems including optimal taxation insurance and incentives economic theory has confined most of its attention to markets with uniform prices in which the price per unit charged is invariant to the level of a customer s purchases this focus is warranted when goods are resellable since any attempt to charge nonuniform prices could be circumvented by reselling amongst customers but when goods are not resellable nonuniform prices are not only possible but common public utilities have declining block pricing with lower unit charges for large levels of consumption many agencies providing services including communications transportation even education use two part pricing with a fixed entry or retainer charge and a further charge per unit consumption nonuniform price schedules can be expected to be ever more common as services become a larger fraction of total output the increasing prevalence of nonuniform pricing policies have made them the focus of recent public and economic attention oi 1971 feldstein 1972 and ng and weisser 1974 have examined optimal two part pricing policies leland and meyer 1976 examine block pricing and show by example that optimal welfare policies may require nonuniform prices if zero profit constraints are binding in this paper we consider arbitrary nonuniform pricing policies using variational techniques two part and block pricing schedules are of course special cases of the environment we consider the work most closely related to our examination is the seminal paper by spence 1978 and subsequent analysis by roberts 1979 spence however does not pay explicit attention to the key role played by constraints on optimal pricing schedules roberts considers upward price discontinuities which lead to bunching of consumers at a given level of consumption but not downward price discontinuities which lead to regions in which no consumer chooses to consume gaps bunching or gaps may appear in the optimal price schedule even when underlying demand and cost functions are smooth and well behaved the prevalence of discontinuous pricing schedules e g the block pricing structures of public utilities argues that these questions are of practical as well as theoretical interest

the simple economics of extortion evidence from trucking in aceh this paper tests whether the behavior of corrupt officials is consistent with standard industrial organization theory we designed a study in which surveyors accompanied indonesian truck drivers on 304 trips during which they observed over 6 000 illegal payments to police soldiers and weigh station attendants using plausibly exogenous changes in the number of checkpoints we show that market structure affects the level of illegal payments we further show that corrupt officials use complex pricing schemes including third degree price discrimination and a menu of two part tariffs our findings illustrate the importance of considering the market structure for bribes when designing anticorruption policy

minimum quality standards and collusion we model the introduction of a minimum quality standard in a vertically differentiated duopoly we extend the literature in determining the standard endogenously showing that the maximisation of social welfare entails an increase in the surplus accruing to consumers served by the low quality firm and a decrease in the surplus of the remaining consumers then we consider the effects of the standard on the stability of price collusion proving that the standard makes it more difficult for firms to collude if consumers are sufficiently rich

when are local incentive constraints sufficient we study the question of whether local incentive constraints are sufficient to imply full incentive compatibility in a variety of mechanism design settings allowing for probabilistic mechanisms we give a unified approach that covers both continuous and discrete type spaces on many common preference domains including any convex domain of cardinal or ordinal preferences single peaked ordinal preferences and successive single crossing ordinal preferences local incentive compatibility suitably defined implies full incentive compatibility on domains of cardinal preferences that satisfy a strong nonconvexity condition local incentive compatibility is not sufficient our sufficiency results hold for dominant strategy and bayesian nash solution concepts and allow for some interdependence in preferences

a reduced form optimal nonlinear income tax problem abstract for a finite population with quasilinear preferences it is shown how mirrlees optimal nonlinear income tax problem can be simplified to a reduced form problem involving only the allocation of the consumption good this result is a finite version of a proposition established in the continuum by s lollivier and j c rochet

food production strategy debates in revolutionary ethiopia abstract for more than a decade two strategies of rural development have competed for the attention of ethiopian policymakers 1 the smallholder approach based on individual freehold a strong private sector and public expenditures in support of essential agricultural sector institutions and infrastructure and 2 the agrarian socialism approach based on collective ownership of the means of production group farming state farms and government control of marketing the article reviews the history and direction of this debate outlining in the process current government policies aimed at promoting agrarian socialism and their effects on food production and the quality of rural life it concludes that ethiopia will suffer ever increasing food deficits until it abandons its current agrarian strategy in favor of smallholder productivity and it offers a range of options for donors involved in programs and projects promoting ethiopia s agricultural development

intertemporal quality discrimination of a durable good monopolist abstract consider a durable good monopolist facing the technology constraint that when he introduces a new product he cannot produce a cheaper variant without a time lag we show that the qualities of his high end and low end products are higher than their efficient quality levels

sector value addition technology and co2 emissions in saudi arabia abstract this study assesses the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis with the case study of saudi arabia by considering three channels volume of production sector value addition to gdp and technological innovation using a long time series data set and applying autoregressive distributed lags ardl methodology this study nullifies the existence of the ekc hypothesis in the case of saudi arabia the study also provides robust evidence that economic growth fosters co2 emissions linearly the results also present that the value addition of growth in the industrial and service sectors is responsible for faster growth in co2 emissions while agriculture value addition is negatively and insignificantly associated with emissions finally this study shows that technological innovation is insignificant in helping to reduce co2 emissions thus substantial technological progress in the production process would reduce co2 emissions without harming economic growth

a welfare measure of consumer vulnerability to rising prices of food imports in the uae abstract the recent and expected continuing rise in food prices has re ignited concern and discussion in the united arab emirates about the country s vulnerability to food supply shocks defining vulnerability as the compensating variation relative to household income we find that although uae households in the lowest income quintile spend on food on average less than a quarter of what households in the highest income quintile spend the former are 3 5 times more vulnerable to rising prices of food imports than the latter

optimal dynamic volume based price regulation abstract we consider a model of optimal price regulation in markets where demand is sluggish and asymmetric providers compete on quality using a spatial model which is suitable to investigate the health care and education sector we analyse within a dynamic set up the scope for price premiums or penalties on volume under the assumption of symmetric cost information we show that the socially optimal time path of quality provision off the steady state can be replicated by a simple dynamic pricing rule where the dynamic part of the rule is ex ante non discriminatory in the sense that the price premium or penalty on volume is common across providers despite their differing production costs whether the price schedule involves a penalty or a premium on volume relates to two concerns regarding production costs and consumer benefits which go in opposite directions price adjustments over time occur only through the price penalty or premium not time directly which highlights the simplicity and thus applicability of this regulation scheme

dynamic linkages between globalization financial development and carbon emissions evidence from asia pacific economic cooperation countries abstract this study determines the dynamic linkages between globalization financial development and carbon emissions in asia pacific economic cooperation apec countries in the presence of energy intensity and economic growth under the framework of environment kuznets curve ekc this study employs the panel data from 1990 to 2016 westerlund cointegration technique to find long run cointegration and continuously updated bias corrected cup bc and continuously updated fully modified cup fm methods to check the long run elasticities between the variables empirical results indicate that globalization and financial development significantly reduce carbon emissions but economic growth and energy intensity increase them these results support the ekc hypothesis for apec countries the dumitrescu and hurlin causality analysis shows that globalization granger causes co2 emissions globalization also causes financial development and energy intensity a feedback effect exists between financial development and co2 emissions furthermore financial development causes economic growth but similar is not true from opposite side in granger sense finally this study presents important policy implications with respect to apec countries

spatial effects of economic performance on the carbon intensity of human well being the environmental kuznets curve in chinese provinces abstract this study analyzes the interdependent relationship between economic development and environmental and human well being in china we evaluate panel data of the carbon intensity of human well being ciwb to measure environmental sustainability and human well being for 30 chinese provinces from 1995 to 2016 we then employ a spatial model to test the environmental kuznets curve the ciwb is an important indicator that incorporates the environmental social and economic dimensions of sustainability the coefficients of gdp squared gdp and cubic gdp are 1 043 0 123 and 0 0045 respectively indicating that the relationship between ciwb and economic growth is an inverted n shape in other words as gdp increases from low to high the ciwb first decreases then increases for a long period until it reaches a turning point and declines thereafter gdp per capita at the two turning points are 850 yuan and 110 000 yuan respectively in the long run economic growth is expected to have a positive effect on sustainable development however currently environmental policies are needed to offset unintended environmental harm analysis of spatial evolution and multiplier spatial effects show that spatial disparity and clustering exist simultaneously this suggests that overall planning for the big picture and cooperative development between adjacent provinces could help to handle regional environmental problems

strategic environmental policy under incomplete information this paper introduces incomplete information into recent analyses of strategic environmental policy it is shown how asymmetric information between planners and producers affects national incentives to impose strategic environmental standards on domestic industries in international oligopolistic competition relative to the full information case incomplete information is likely to mitigate allocative distortions originating from strategic behaviour a countervailing effect tending to raise distortion is however revealed from the analysis this effect is absent when governments intervene in free trade through direct production subsidies the results suggest that incentives to capture foreign rents are less reduced due to private information when environmental standards rather than direct production subsidies are the strategic instrument

spillover effects of economic globalization on co2 emissions a spatial panel approach abstract this paper investigates the spatial effects of economic globalization on co2 emissions in a panel of 83 countries over the period 1985 2013 we apply the spatial panel method to address the problems of spatial dependency and the spillover effect among neighboring countries first the estimation results verify the existence of the spatial correlations in co2 emissions across nations second we find that the indirect effect of economic globalization on co2 emissions is so significantly negative to overcome the positive direct effect which implies a negative and significant total effect so our results suggest that being surrounded by highly globalized countries has a positive effect on the environmental quality finally we also find strong evidence for the inverted u shaped ekc relationship between co2 emissions and income

group buying on the web a comparison of price discovery mechanisms web based group buying mechanisms are being widely used for both business to business b2b and business to consumer b2c transactions we survey currently operational online group buying markets and then study this phenomenon using analytical models we build on the literatures in information economics and operations management in our analytical model of a monopolist offering web based group buying under different kinds of demand uncertainty we derive the monopolist s optimal group buying schedule under varying conditions of heterogeneity in the demand regimes and compare its profits with those that obtain under the more conventional posted price mechanism we further study the impact ofproduction postponement by endogenizing the timing of the pricing and production decisions in a two stage game between the monopolist and buyers our results have implications for firms choice of price discovery mechanisms in e markets and for the scheduling of production and pricing decisions in the presence and absence of scale economies of production

nonlinear pricing and price cap regulation abstract this paper analyzes profit maximizing nonlinear pricing by a firm that is subject to price cap regulation two forms of regulatory constraint are considered i a cap on the firm s average revenue and ii a constraint that the firm must continue to offer each consumer the option of buying at the uniform price optimal nonlinear price schedules in these regimes are shown to have simple characterizations that are related to the nonlinear tariffs that an unregulated monopolist would charge of the regulatory regimes the firm prefers the average revenue constraint to the option constraint and likes uniform pricing least consumers in aggregate prefer the option regime to uniform pricing and like the average revenue constraint least but there are also distributional effects between consumers although the optional tariff regime pareto dominates uniform pricing it is ambiguous whether welfare is higher under uniform pricing or under the average revenue regime an example is used to illustrate the nature of the ambiguity

equivalence between the diamond dybvig banking model and the optimal income taxation model abstract it is shown that the diamond dybvig journal of political economy 96 1983 768 banking model with a continuum of types of agents has the same analytical structure as the standard optimal income taxation model review of economic studies 38 1971 175 review of economic studies 43 1976 261 insights from the income taxation literature immediately imply that a bank run equilibrium exists in the banking model as long as the long term project is sufficiently costly to liquidate

rate of return regulation and product variety abstract this paper examines the effect of rate of regulation on a monopolist that faces a market of observationally identical but heterogeneous consumers under plausible technological conditions rate of return regulation increases the quality offered to any consumer and expands the variety of products it offers some consumers receive a quality that is greater than the socially optimal quality rate of return regulation unambiguously increases consumers surplus if the allowed rate of return is close to the monopoly rate of return social welfare increases as well

re examining the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis in the economic community of west african states a panel quantile regression approach abstract this study investigates the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for six west african countries over 1970 2017 while using human capital and biocapacity as additional determinants of carbon emissions it uses the panel quantile regression method that provides robust results in case the classical econometric assumptions fail the empirical results revealed that a u shaped relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide co2 emissions holds in the low middle and high emissions countries as opposed to the inverted u shaped ekc hypothesis trade openness reduces environmental performance in low emission countries financial development has mixed impacts on co2 emissions across the quantiles while financial development enhances environmental quality in the low emissions countries it exerts a detrimental impact in the middle and high emissions countries human capital has significantly positive effects on the lower middle and upper quantiles the obtained results highlight the need for raising environmental awareness and promoting green r d in addition relevant incentives are required to redirect private credits towards green projects and renewable energy development

competitive screening under heterogeneous information we study the interplay between informational frictions and second degree price discrimination our theory recognizes that consumers differ in their tastes for quality as well as in the information they possess about available offers which leads to dispersion over price quality menus in equilibrium while firms are ex ante identical we show that their menus are ordered so that more generous menus leave more surplus to consumers of all valuations we explore the cross section of equilibrium menus and variations in market conditions to generate empirical predictions on prices qualities and markups across firms and within a firm s product line for instance more competition may raise prices for low quality goods yet consumers are better off as the qualities they receive also increase the predictions of our model illuminate empirical findings in many markets such as those for cell phone plans yellow pages advertising cable tv and air travel

involuntary unemployment and worker self selection abstract consider a firm that lacks information about the reservation wage or ability of any specific worker but is aware that workers with higher reservation wages tend to be more able on average we show that under a simple condition that the efficiency wage exceeds the lowest reservation wage the optimal hiring policy for the firm involves 1 no wage discrimination and 2 rationing of jobs when demand for its product is low the result also extends to the case where hours of work are variable provided each worker is most productive when working a strictly positive number of hours per week

environmental degradation in france the effects of fdi financial development and energy innovations abstract this paper explores the determinants of carbon emissions in france by accounting for the significant role played by foreign direct investment fdi financial development economic growth energy consumption and energy research innovations in influencing co 2 emissions function in this endeavour we employ the novel sor shahbaz et al 2017 unit root test on french time series data over the period 1955 2016 to examine the order of integration in the presence of sharp and smooth structural breaks in the variables we also apply the bootstrapping bounds testing approach recently developed by mcnown et al 2018 to investigate the presence of cointegration and the empirical findings underscore the presence of cointegration among the time series moreover we find that fdi has a positive impact while energy research innovations have a negative impact on french carbon emissions financial development lowers carbon emissions thereby improving the french environmental quality fdi degrades the environment and thus supports the pollution haven hypothesis in france similarly financial development suggests that financial stability is a required condition for improving environmental quality so are energy research innovations contrarily energy consumption is positively linked with carbon emissions however the relationship between economic growth and co 2 emissions is an inverted u which is a validation of the environmental kuznets curve ekc

the multiproduct firm quality choice and regulation a monopolist facing a market of heterogeneous consumers will distort the quality a rray this paper explores three regulatory remedies minimum quality s tandards mqs maximum price regulation mpr and rate of return re gulation rorr that can counteract this distortion mqs and mpr rais e the quality offered to consumers with a low willingness to pay for quality while mqs have no effect on the quality offered to consumers with a high willingness to pay mpr decreases the quality offered to this group if production of high low quality goods is capital i ntensive rorr increases decreases the quality offered to both grou ps copyright 1988 by blackwell publishing ltd

optimal number of standards under economies of scope in quality abstract stivers stivers andrew e 2003 quality standards with exogenously distributed quality economics letters 80 1 130 136 finds the optimal segmentation of quality when the distribution of quality is exogenous this paper characterizes the optimal number of standards as the cost of information falls both the number of standards and the market coverage of the firm rise

market power information and efficiency the link between solutions and equilibrium distortions the extent of competition generally determines both the location and the extent of distortions due to information asymmetries when agents have private information increased competition raises agent welfare at the expense of uninformed principals nevertheless increased competition among principals may lower total surplus the losses sustained by principals as a group exceed the benefits realized by agents as a group when there is a sufficiently large proportion of agents with high cost of agent effort these results are independent of the correlation between the agent s marginal cost and the principal s marginal benefit of agent effort copyright 1993 by blackwell publishing ltd

a test of environmental kuznets curve for haze pollution in china evidence from the penal data of 27 capital cities abstract the mounting environmental crisis especially the large scale and continuous haze pollution is the most pressing challenge for china during rapid urbanization process this study is aimed at examining the relationship between haze pollution and economic growth and its turning points for different regions in china based on the panel data of 27 capital cities and municipalities in china during 2011 2015 we constructed the parameter estimation model after conducting the unit root cointegration and hausman tests based on the basic and extended models we find that the relationship between haze pollution and economic growth in china is not a typical inverted u shaped environmental kuznet curve ekc by introducing variables such as industrial structure foreign trade and energy intensity this study demonstrates that adjusting industrial structure and improving energy efficiency are effective means for haze pollution control grouping regressions reveal that regional differences exist in the relationships between haze pollution and economic growth and their tuning points for instance there was a u shaped relationship for the central region while there were inverted n shaped relationships for eastern western and northeastern regions policy implications are thus summarized for different regions in terms of balancing economic growth and environmental protection

emission intensive growth and trade in the era of the association of southeast asian nations asean integration an empirical investigation from asean 8 abstract this paper attempts to shed some light on the energy consumption and associated emissions linking recent trade integration for eight economies in the asean region brunei darussalam cambodia indonesia malaysia philippines singapore thailand and vietnam considering the heterogeneity across the panel of countries a long run relationship is established between output energy trade and emissions over a period of three decades the role of transportation is considered in this respect the overall findings indicate that the environmental consequences of economic growth are alarming for most of the countries in the panel and non renewable energy consumption is the key contributing factor towards environmental deterioration in the asean region of the eight it is further established that five economies from the region cambodia indonesia malaysia thailand and vietnam predominantly engage in emission intensive trade and an increase in future energy demand and environmental degradation is projected for these countries we suggest that the implementation of economic and trade policies in future should align with the energy sector in this respect renewable energy sources will play a greater role in sustainable growth and development across the countries

the role of education in the environmental kuznets curve evidence from australian data abstract this paper is based on the underlying idea that the use of energy resources in a society significantly depends on their level of education then it is hypothesized that education might directly affect environmental quality by worsening it at early stages and improving it once education expands from its certain level thus we pursue an extension of the standard environmental kuznets curve by including an indicator of the evolution of citizens education this empirical strategy might avoid bias on income coefficients and in turn assess the value of education as environmental policy an application for australia is given to illustrate this possibility by using higher education data for a large time span 1950 2014 empirical results suggest that in most of the studied period expansion in education rate has increasingly compensated the rise of per capita co 2 emissions stemming from the economic growth moreover only in recent years both per capita income and education expansion have been proved to reduce emissions however provided that income growth is difficult to manage it would be worth considering the possibility of promoting education in order to achieve environmental objectives

nonlinear pricing with self control preferences a basic assumption of economics is that consumers choose what they want however many consumers find it difficult to stop overeating overspending smoking procrastinating etc even though they want to in reality consumers have temptation and it is psychologically costly to exercise self control to clarify the implications of the existence of temptation and self control costs this paper studies a firm s optimal selling strategy exploiting the behavioral features of consumers we characterize optimal nonlinear pricing schemes for a monopoly when self control is costly for consumers since consumers have a preference for commitment the firm faces a trade off between offering a small menu that makes the consumers self control easier and offering a large menu that achieves better price discrimination we show that the optimal menu resembles the one in the standard nonlinear pricing problem with a price ceiling where the upper bound on prices is determined endogenously by a participation constraint the ceiling motivates the firm to offer a relatively flat and compact price schedule serving more consumers with low demand the characterization also shows that the firm may earn less if consumers have temptation

does economic growth and energy consumption drive environmental degradation in china s 31 provinces new evidence from a spatial econometric perspective the panel data analysis points to economic and social factors contributing to nox pm2 5 pm10 so2 and vocs in china s 31 provinces the spatial correlation analysis using global and local moran

monopoly and quality distortion effects and remedies a monopolist that sells in a market in which consumers differ in their willingness to pay for quality will distort and enlarge the range of products offered for sale we examine the positive and normative impacts of remedies used to counteract such distortions for the case of a price ceiling the monopolist improves quality at the low quality end of the market offsetting the distortion induced by the unregulated exercise of monopoly power social welfare can be shown to increase for a sufficiently slight degree of price regulation for minimum quality standards the social welfare implications are ambiguous because the standards may exclude some consumers from the market

automobile quality choice under pollution control regulation in this paper we develop a modified quality choice model to study the effects of various mobile source air pollution control regulations we have a single producer that supplies a fixed number of car types two but faces a spectrum of consumers differing in their valuation of car quality the car manufacturer chooses the quality levels of the two car types as well as the sales mix between the two types and the size of the market it wishes to supply by endogenizing both the sales mix and the market size while still allowing quality to be a choice variable we are able to more completely analyze the impact of any car pollution control regulation existing studies of this impact either focus on the model line adjustment response shifts in the quality array or on the price adjustment response changes in the sales mix and market size in allowing for both the model line and the price adjustment options we find that the corporate average fuel efficiency cafe standard is unambiguously welfare superior to the low emission vehicle quantity constraint lev and zero emission vehicle zev programs we also show that the effects of the cafe standard are not equivalent to those of a fuel tax as previously found and that for a given car pollution target the former is preferred to the latter

quality distortion by a discriminating monopolist the standard model of monopolistic imperfect quality discrimination involving consumer self selection has shown that no distortion occurs at the highest quality level while all lower quality levels are degraded in order to maintain profitable market segmentation this result flows from the assumption that consumers with a higher total utility of quality also have a higher marginal utility of quality the paper develops a reasonable model in which the standard assumption is not satisfied and this alternative model yields vastly different conclusions regarding the form of quality distortion in particular quality may be enhanced not degraded to maintain profitable market segmentation copyright 1989 by american economic association

why do larger buyers pay lower prices intense supplier competition abstract the paper provides a theoretical explanation of the common claim that larger buyers pay lower prices in the model suppliers compete more aggressively for the business of larger buyers much as they do in boom periods of rotemberg and saloner

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

renewable non renewable energy consumption economic growth trade openness and ecological footprint evidence from organisation for economic co operation and development countries the purpose of this study is to examine the validity of environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for ecological footprint with the role of renewable energy use non renewable energy use and trade openness in 24 organisation for economic co operation and development countries for this purpose we investigate the period from 1980 to 2014 using with second generation panel data methodologies which allow to cross sectional dependence among countries the group mean results show that the inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve hypothesis does not hold in organisation for economic co operation and development countries because we found the u shaped relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint in addition it is concluded that increasing renewable energy consumption reduces ecological footprint and increasing non renewable energy consumption increases environmental degradation

regulating a monopolist with unknown costs we consider the problem of how to regulate a monopolistic firm whose costs are unknown to the regulator the regulator s objective is to maximize a linear social welfare function of the consumers surplus and the firm s profit in the optimal regulatory policy prices and subsidies are designed as functions of the firm s cost report so that expected social welfare is maximized subject to the constraints that the firm has nonnegative profit and has no incentive to misrepresent its costs we explicitly derive the optimal policy and analyze its properties in their classic papers dupuit 2 and hotelling 5 considered pricing policies for a bridge that had a fixed cost of construction and zero marginal cost they demonstrated that the pricing policy that maximizes consumer well being is to set price equal to marginal cost and to provide a subsidy to the supplier equal to the fixed cost so that a firm would be willing to provide the bridge this first best solution is based on a number of informational assumptions first the demand function is assumed to be known to both the regulator and to the firm while the assumption of complete information may be too strong the assumption that information about demand is as available to the regulator as it is to the firm does not seem unnatural a second informational assumption is that the regulator has complete information about the cost of the firm or at least has the same information about cost as does the firm this assumption is unlikely to be met in reality since the firm would be expected to have better information about costs than would the regulator as weitzman has stated an essential feature of the regulatory environment i am trying to describe is uncertainty about the exact specification of each firm s cost function in most cases even the managers and engineers most closely associated with production will be unable to precisely specify beforehand the cheapest way to generate various hypothetical output levels because they are yet removed from the production process the regulators are likely to be vaguer still about a firm s cost function 12 p 684 as this observation suggests it is natural to expect that a firm would have better information regarding its costs than would a regulator the purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal regulatory policy for the case in which the regulator does not know the costs of the firm one strategy that a regulator could use in the absence of full information about costs is to give the firm the title to the total social surplus and to delegate the pricing decision to the firm in pursuing its own interests which would then be to maximize the total social surplus the firm would adopt the same marginal cost pricing strategy that the regulator would have imposed if the regulator had

assessing the role of institutions in limiting the environmental externalities of economic growth emissions of pollutants tend to be procyclical as they generally increase with economic growth however as government policy has a role to play in the mitigation of the environmental consequences of economic activity the quality of institutions may influence the procyclicality of pollution and reduce the environmental cost of economic growth based on the assumption that changes in emissions are stronger at earlier stages of development we develop a non linear framework and confirm first the presence of income related threshold effects in the relationship between pollution co 2 and greenhouse gas emissions and growth for a panel of 142 countries over a period spanning from 1960 to 2017 we also find that institutional quality influences this relationship as the quality of institutions lowers the value of the threshold and the degree of procyclicality of emissions these results bring therefore evidence that higher institutional quality can attenuate the environmental externalities of economic growth

energy consumption economic growth and co2 emissions in middle east and north african countries this article extends the recent findings of liu 2005 ang 2007 apergis et al 2009 and payne 2010 by implementing recent bootstrap panel unit root tests and cointegration techniques to investigate the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions energy consumption and real gdp for 12 middle east and north african countries mena over the period 1981 2005 our results show that in the long run energy consumption has a positive significant impact on co2 emissions more interestingly we show that real gdp exhibits a quadratic relationship with co2 emissions for the region as a whole however although the estimated long run coefficients of income and its square satisfy the ekc hypothesis in most studied countries the turning points are very low in some cases and very high in other cases hence providing poor evidence in support of the ekc hypothesis co2 emission reductions per capita have been achieved in the mena region even while the region exhibited economic growth over the period 1981 2005 the econometric relationships derived in this paper suggest that future reductions in co2 emissions per capita might be achieved at the same time as gdp per capita in the mena region continues to grow