"Polluters' Profits": An Empirical Note
检验了Buchanan和Tullock的理论，即环境规制可能通过限制产出和阻止竞争进入来提升污染企业的利润，并基于美国行业数据进行了实证分析。
IN AN insightful theoretical treatment of environmental regulation, Buchanan and Tullock (B-T) [i] described the possible conditions for profit enhancement caused when environmental regulations are imposed on a given industry. Their analysis focused on source standards where pollution was a joint product with a representative firm's output. Restrictions on pollution led to reductions in output, and the environmental authorities acted as cartel managers to make certain cheating did not occur. The results of the B-T model were higher industry price, lower output, and, due to the lack of competitive entry, inefficient production. Polluter profits were enhanced in a regulation-induced equilibrium. There was no internal incentive for changing the regulatory institution to a system of charges, marketable permits or emission taxes. The B-T analysis was later modified by Mumy [3] and used to develop an alternative regulatory strategy which might be palatable to polluters. Mumy effectively capitalized the polluter profits in his model, but introduced an incentive for the original polluters to exchange pollution rights with other firms which might place a higher value on them. Koch and Leone [2] have used implicitly a version of the B-T analysis for a study of the tissue paper industry and the effects of water pollution control requirements on that industry's profits. Their case study supported the notion that profits can be enhanced by strict pollution control standards, especially when the standards are designed not to capsize the weaker firms in an industry. As yet, however, no general test of the B-T theory has been reported. And that is the purpose of this note. The next section discusses the institutions which have been developed and applied to the pollution problem and relates those institutions to the theory. From the discussion, a testable model is developed. That and the results of a three-part search for B-T effects are reported in the section which follows.