PRICE (Dollars per ton) 80 72 64 56 48 40 32 24 16 B Demand 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 QUANTITY (Millions of tons) Graph Input Tool Daily Demand for Pollution Rights Price 8 (Dollars per ton) Quantity Demanded (Millions of tons) 225 Suppose the government has determined that the socially optimal quantity of sulfur dioxide emissions is 125 million tons per day. One way governments can charge firms for pollution rights is by imposing a per-unit tax on emissions. A tax (or price in this case) of $ of sulfur dioxide emitted will achieve the desired level of pollution. per ton Now suppose the U.S. government does not know the demand curve for pollution and, therefore, cannot determine the optimal tax to achieve the desired level of pollution. Instead, it auctions off pollution permits. Each permit entitles its owner to emit one ton of sulfur dioxide per day. To achieve the socially optimal quantity of pollution, the government auctions off 125 million pollution permits. Given this quantity of permits, the price for each permit in the market for pollution rights will be S The previous analysis hinges on the government having good information regarding either the demand for pollution permits or the optimal level of pollution (or both). Given that the appropriate policy (pollution permits or pollution taxes) can depend on the available information and the policy goal, consider the following scenario. Imagine that new research suggests that if manufacturers in a particular city reduced their emissions to 40 million tons of waste per year, the air quality would improve dramatically. If this is all the information the government has, which solution to reduce pollution is appropriate? Check all that apply. Pollution taxes Pollution permits

How can high-income countries benefit from covering much of the cost of reducing pollution created by low-income countries?

A country called Sherwood is very heavily covered with a forest of 50,000 trees. There are proposals to clear some of Sherwoods forest and grow com, but obtaining this additional economic output will have an environmental cost from reducing the number of trees. Table 12.11 shows possible combinations of economic output and environmental protection. Sketch a graph of a production possibility frontier with environmental quality on the horizontal axis, measured by the number of trees, and the quantity of economic output, measured in corn, on the vertical axis. Which choices display productive efficiency? How can you tell? Which choices show allocative efficiency? How can you tell? In the choice between T and R, decide which one is better. Why? In the choice between T and S, can you say which one is better, and why? If you had to guess, which choice would you think is more likely to represent a command-and-control environmental policy and which choice is more likely to represent a market-oriented environmental policy, choice Q or S? Why?

What is a pollution charge and what incentive does it provide for a firm to take external costs into account?