Environmental Economics and Modeling Marketable Permits

Marketable Permits for the Prevention of EnvironmentalDeterioration1

This paper develops a modified system of marketable emission permits that promises both savings in abatement costs to sources and improved environmental quality relative to an initial command-and-control (CAC) outcome. Using a model of TSP emissions for the Baltimore Air Quality Control Region (AQCR), a series of simulation exercises indicates that such a permit system could generate large cost...

Marketable Pollution Permits in Oligopolistic Markets with Transaction Costs

On Marketable Air-Pollution Permits: The Case for a System of Pollution Offsets

After examining the properties of several alternative forms of marketable permit systems for the control of air pollution, this paper proposes a system of pollution offsets as the most promising approach. Under the pollution-offset scheme, sources of emissions are free to trade emissions permits subject to the constraint of no violations of the predetermined air-quality standard at any receptor...

Modeling the Economics of Biodiversity and Environmental Heterogeneity

It has long been recognized that major drivers of biodiversity loss include both the harvest of wild species and the conversion of habitat for productive purposes. Land that is converted may or may not be lost as habitat for many species. In some cases, monoculture production for example, land conversion reduces the number niches and hence the level of biodiversity. In other cases, it has the o...

Environmental and Regional Economics