A Secure Electronic Market for Anonymous Transferable Emission Permits

Electronic Markets as new mechanisms for co-ordinating allocation of goods, are supposed to reduce the trading immanent transaction costs, especially when the traded goods are digitally represented. A market with no transaction costs is theoretically the most efficient possible allocation mechanism. The US government has recently passed the Acid Rain Act, which uses a system of tradable permits to reduce pollution for the first time. In this document we present a new example of a solution for environmental policy with tradable emission permits, that is based on electronic markets. Open electronic markets are able to improve a systems efficiency by solving the difficulties that result from high transaction costs. We introduce the concept of original and anonymous permits, which can be freely traded in a open network without any restrictions. It may be used for other types of electronic documents such as shares, which are only of value, if they satisfy the criteria "Originality". The advantage of anonymity is of an economic nature, especially in terms of acceptance of the open electronic market. An open electronic market in an open network like the Internet is insecure, but it is accessible for a large amount of potential users. To get a open network, where trading is without restrictions, and which is also secure, a set of security services have to be provided. In this work we specify a secure completion phase of an electronic market for free tradable, anonymous and original permits by using cryptographic methods and organisational measures such as digital signatures and trusted third parties. We proposed this in [12] too.