研討日期

2004年3月6日上午10:00 ~ 12:00

研討地點

台大社會科學院第二教室

討論文獻

題目

作者

文獻出處

Uncertainty and Incentives for Nonpoint Pollution Control

Kathleen Segerson

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 15, 87-98, 1988

報告人

蔡宗秀

參加人員

許淑英、林燕淑、楊雅博、胡均立、邱俊榮、陳秀華、蔡爵丞、郭子綾、蔡宗秀

討論提要

1.      Nonpoint source pollution is difficult to control because the observed pollution level is caused not just the firms’ pollution abatement efforts but also due to random effects; moreover, all firms contribute to the pollution.  The purpose of this paper is to provide a tax scheme that can avoid free rider problems. 

2.       In the model, the author assumes policy maker can observe the ambient pollution level and is able to set a differential tax scheme on all possible polluters.  All firms are assumed price takers.

3.      It is argued that the there exists a tax scheme that can fix the free-rider problem in nonpoint pollution.  This tax is set at the point where the differential tax rate equals the value of the expected marginal abatement benefit of abatement divided by the firm’s marginal cost of abatement. 

延伸研究

Segerson assumes all firms are price takers, implying that firms are in perfect competition.  However, if the market structure is imperfect, then market price is not fixed.  In this case, firms may have strategic behavior in production and may have no incentive to do sufficient amount of pollution control.  Market failure arises.  Hence, one of the future extensions is to relax the perfect competition assumption.  For simplicity, one can assume firms are in Coutnot competition and they can choose pollution types given the opponent firms’ type.  Moreover, one can further assume that firms face joint liability in effluent tax.  I expect market failure will arise, and it requires another scheme to fix nonpoint pollution problem.     

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