This thesis is composed of three essays. In the first essay I identify the
effects of imposing a broad range of environmental regulations under different market
conditions.. I compare four types of regulatory controls under Perfect Competition,
Monopoly, and Cournot Competition: Emission Standards, Design Standards, Concentration
Standards, and Output Standards. I rank each of the standards in terms of firm profitability,
industry output, abatement costs, and social welfare. I derive sufficient conditions for
Design, or Concentration Standards, to dominate Emission Standards. I show how the
different forms of regulation can raise industry profits by reducing the degree of inter-firm
competition. Further, I show how environmental regulations can enhance competition and
yield a "double dividend": higher Social Surplus and less pollution.
In the second essay I extend the comparison of standards to an open country. I show
how a country's choice of regulatory regime influences the level of environmental protection
when governments care about the competitiveness of their industries. I show that the mode
of regulation can create a "race to the bottom" if regulators behave strategically. I show that
Emission Standards permit the race, as do Emission Charges. Design Standards, on the other
hand, avoid the race altogether by breaking the link between environmental stringency and
industrial competitiveness. Countries using Design Standards will always regulate
emissions. This holds regardless of the environmental stance taken by competitor nations. If
countries do not behave strategically, then Emission Standards and Emission Charges always
dominate Design Standards.
In the third essay I use the concept of home biases in traded goods, or "Border
Effects", to rank industries and countries in terms of their openness to trade. I first confirm
the presence border effects for individual sectors and individual industries among OECD
countries for 1970 to 1985. I also examine whether country-specific border effects are
determined by the sectoral composition of a country's production. I find limited evidence to
support this. Rather, per capita incomes appear to be the most important factor. The
conclusion I draw is that the level of development appears to be the prime factor in
explaining the differences in country-specific border effects. What countries produce is of
some importance. Therefore, we should see continued, though possibly slow, reductions in
home biases as all countries continue to develop. This will partially determine the kind of
environmental regulation used as well as their level. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/11110 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Bruneau, Joel Francis |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 14951456 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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