Optimal Taxation Rule Reversal in the Presence of Gentle Polluters and Greedy Cleaners

The literature on the micro-economics of the eco-industry often assumed interiority of pollutant net emissions. In a perfectly competitive final good market vertically integrated with an upstream monopoly supply this assumption implies that an optimal tax is always greater than its associated margin...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inIDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc
Main Author Sans, Damien
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 01.01.2015
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:The literature on the micro-economics of the eco-industry often assumed interiority of pollutant net emissions. In a perfectly competitive final good market vertically integrated with an upstream monopoly supply this assumption implies that an optimal tax is always greater than its associated marginal social damage. In this short note we will relax this assumption and challenge that result. The market structure generates a unique threshold on the scale of the marginal social damage, whereby for any value above the threshold an optimal tax is strictly lower and net emissions are zero.