| With the increasing development of global economy, people’s living standard has greatly improved. However, the contradiction between the environment and economy is also becoming severe, which brings out a huge threat to the national competitiveness and industrial security. It is of great importance for the governments to control the global environmental destruction and reduce industial pollution. In this paper, from the respects of environmental taxes and green subsidies, we discuss the government environmental policy of how to induce firms’development of new technology^ energy and greener products.Chapter 3 discusses the policy decision of a local government on how to determine the best pollution tax rate. In our model, two profit-maximizing firms facing price and emission sensitive consumers select their retail prices in response to the pollution tax rate set by the local government. The objectives of the local government includes three aspects:increasing the government revenue, enhancing the employment level and reducing carbon emissions. In order to find a reasonable tradeoff among the three objectives, we regard the problem of the optimal tax rate selection as a multiple criteria decision-making problem, and use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to solve it. Furthermore, we use a numerical example to present our work.Chapter 4 presents a study on a government using subsidy policy to motivate firms’adoption of green emissions-reducing technology when consumers are environmentally discerning. We consider two profit-maximizing firms selling two products in a price and pollution sensitive market. The products differ only in their manufacturing costs, selling prices and the amount of pollutant emissions per unit of product. If the firm adopts green technology, it may receive government subsidy, attract more consumers and reduce pollution emissions per unit of product. However, its manufacturing cost may increase as well. The objective of each firm is to determine the selling prices of the products, taking into account the impact of green technology on costs and customer demands. Two cases are considered:1) the government has limited budget and can choose only one firm at most to provide subsidy; 2) the government has sufficient budget and can choose both firms to provide subsidy. We discuss which firm should be selected in each case and in which situation the firm has incentive to invest in the green technology. We also show how the green technology level, environmental improvement coefficient and unit cost increase (decrease) coefficient impact firms’pricing strategies and government subsidy policy.Research on e-waste recovery problems is conducted in the second part of the dissertation, i.e., Chapter 5. In this part, we present a study on the impact of recycling standard on e-waste recycling supply chain. Different recycling standards may result in different demand and proceesing costs. High-type standard may lead to high demand; however, it also results in high processing cost. We aim to understand when a recycler would choose a more stringent (high-type) certification over a less stringent one (low-type). How would recyclers’economies of scale (EoS) in processing e-waste and collectors’reselling in secondary market affect recyclers’pricing and choice of certification? To that end, we model competition between two e-waste recovery channels, each containing a recycler and a collector. In a two-stage model, each recycler first chooses its certification level (high or low) and the wholesale price it will pay to its collector. Then each collector determines what fraction of its collection volume to sell to its recycler, and what fraction to sell in the secondary market. We assume that consumers who are environmentally conscious prefer to take their e-waste to a high-type rather than a low-type recovery channel. Therefore, the e-waste recovery channels compete both in the secondary market, and for collection of e-waste from the consumer population. We find that the collectors’engagement in secondary market and the recyclers’EoS in unit processing cost are critical to the recyclers’equilibrium choice of certification. When the recyclers’EoS is small, as expected, the recyclers choose the high-type certification only when the additional processing cost of high-type certificate is sufficiently low. Surprisingly, when the recyclers’EoS is strong, they choose low-type certification when additional processing cost is sufficiently low. Moreover, the recyclers encounter prisoners’ dilemma when both of them choose high-type certification. Finally, we find that increase in the total recycling volume from the consumers always benefits the recyclers’, but it may actually lower the collectors’profitability.The contributions of the dissertation are as follows:1) Chapter 3 discusses the policy decision of a local government on how to determine the best pollution tax rate. In the first place, we quantitatively analyze the three objectives with different dimensions and make them comparable. Then we use game theory to analyze the competitive firms’pricing strategies. Finally, we regard the problem of the optimal tax rate selection as a multiple criteria decision-making problem and use data envelopment analysis to solve it.2) In Chapter 4, we analyze firms’optimal pricing strategies and the conditions of receiving government subsidy. It not only extends the current research scope of green subsidy, but also provides theoretical foundation for government policy in practice.3) Chapter 5 discusses when a recycler would choose a more stringent (high-type) recycling standard over a less stringent one (low-type). How would recyclers’economies of scale (EoS) in processing e-waste and collectors’ reselling in secondary market affect recyclers’pricing and choice of recycling standard? Different from previous literature that focus on take back and remanufacturing, we focus solely on e-waste recycling supply chains and examine each player’s activities and their interactions, which is of great value to the development of e-waste recycling market.
|
PDF Full Text Request