Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
标准与搜索技术创新
Standards and technology innovation with search
摘要
This paper examines optimal environmental regulation based on emission or performance standards in the presence of consumer search and firm innovation. With an exogenous market structure, we find that the emission and performance standards lead to the same equilibrium level of innovation, which decreases in the degree of competition in a Schumpeterian way, and these two policy tools are equivalent in terms of total welfare but not in distributional terms because they give rise to different levels of consumer and producer surplus. Here, low search costs can lead to price-increasing competition for concentrated industries and spillovers determine the time consistency of the standards. With an endogenous market structure, the two regulatory instruments lead to different levels of total welfare, they both yield excessive firm entry, and the magnitude of the inefficiency from excessive entry is relatively greater under the emission standard.
中文摘要
本文考察在存在消费者搜索与企业创新的情况下，基于排放标准或绩效标准的最优环境规制。在外生市场结构下，我们发现排放标准与绩效标准导致相同的均衡创新水平，该水平以熊彼特式方式随竞争程度提高而下降；这两种政策工具在总福利方面等价，但在分配方面不等价，因为它们导致不同水平的消费者剩余和生产者剩余。在这里，低搜索成本可能导致集中产业中出现价格上升型竞争，而溢出效应决定标准的动态一致性。在内生市场结构下，这两种规制工具导致不同水平的总福利，它们都会造成过度企业进入，而在排放标准下，过度进入所导致的低效率程度相对更大。