Environmental Policy in General Equilibrium under Market Power and Price Discrimination

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen, Tengjiao, Karney, Daniel H.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909448882094080
author Chen, Tengjiao
Karney, Daniel H.
author_facet Chen, Tengjiao
Karney, Daniel H.
contents This study constructs a novel analytical general equilibrium model to compare environmental policies in a setting where oligopolistic energy firms engage in third-degree price discrimination across residential consumers and industrial firms. Closed-form solutions demonstrate the impact on prices and quantities. The resulting welfare change is decomposed across three distortions: output, price discrimination, and externality. This study finds that the output distortion and price discrimination welfare effects generally move in opposite directions under policies such as an emission tax or a two-part instrument. Numerical analysis compares policies and finds scenarios where the output distortion and price discrimination welfare changes fully offset and thus leaves the net welfare gain of the externality correction. In this way, environmental policy can be designed to mitigate output distortion welfare concerns when firms have market power.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_03114
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Environmental Policy in General Equilibrium under Market Power and Price Discrimination
Chen, Tengjiao
Karney, Daniel H.
General Economics
Economics
This study constructs a novel analytical general equilibrium model to compare environmental policies in a setting where oligopolistic energy firms engage in third-degree price discrimination across residential consumers and industrial firms. Closed-form solutions demonstrate the impact on prices and quantities. The resulting welfare change is decomposed across three distortions: output, price discrimination, and externality. This study finds that the output distortion and price discrimination welfare effects generally move in opposite directions under policies such as an emission tax or a two-part instrument. Numerical analysis compares policies and finds scenarios where the output distortion and price discrimination welfare changes fully offset and thus leaves the net welfare gain of the externality correction. In this way, environmental policy can be designed to mitigate output distortion welfare concerns when firms have market power.
title Environmental Policy in General Equilibrium under Market Power and Price Discrimination
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03114