Voluntary Compliance with Market‐Based Environmental Policy: Evidence from the U. S. Acid Rain Program
研究美国酸雨计划中电力企业自愿参与SO2排放交易的行为，发现参与规模小但主要由排放低于配额的企业驱动，且经济变量能很好解释参与决策，为低成本合规策略和低交易成本提供了新证据。
The U. S. Acid Rain Program implemented a nationwide market for electric utilities' sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions and included voluntary compliance possibilities for nonaffected sources. I observe significant voluntary participation‐albeit with small impact on the SO2 market‐mostly from sources with counterfactual emissions below their allowance allocations. An ex post analysis suggests that costs from the resulting higher emissions outweigh savings from shifts in emissions reductions from high‐cost affected sources to low‐cost nonaffected sources. Further, utilities' voluntary participation is well explained by economic variables, which provides new evidence of cost‐effective compliance strategies and low transaction costs.