ESTIMATION OF PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES WITH OUTPUT AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSTRAINTS
研究了美国燃煤电厂在产出和排放约束下如何选择煤炭质量和减排措施以最小化成本，并估计了发电生产率和减排效率的增长。
Abstract Coal‐fired power plants minimize costs subject to output and emission constraints. We model the plants' choice of coal quality and emission abatement to minimize costs under these constraints, allowing for heterogeneous unobserved generation productivity and abatement efficiency. We derive and estimate the plants' cost functions to recover the production technologies. Our data set is a balanced panel of 76 U.S. coal‐fired power plants from 1995 to 2005, when the emission permit trading system was viable. We find a dramatic growth in abatement efficiency, a major goal of the Acid Rain Program. By contrast, the growth in generation productivity is positive but small.