Essais sur la taxation environnementale et l'eco -industrie

With the growing pressure of environmental regulation, polluting industries largely procure abatement goods and services from a specialized industry, the so called "eco-industry". This four-essay thesis deals with the impact of the structure of the eco-industry on the effectiveness of environmental policies.;The second essay revisits the Pigouvian tax theory in a context of environmental outsourcing. The methodology used is based on a partial equilibrium model and relies on comparative static and welfare analyses. The problem is addressed as a successive oligopoly game, with a polluting industry vertically related to an eco-industry, in which perfect competition and monopoly can be incorporated as special cases. We find that the optimal emission tax departs from the marginal social cost of pollution according to the polluters' and the eco-industrial firms' relative market power.;The third essay endogenizes the market structure of the eco-industry in order to fully assess how a more stringent emission tax affects the market behavior of the eco-industry. Notwithstanding that the number of eco-industrial firms and the eco-industry output always increase with a rise in the emission tax, we find that tightening environmental regulation does riot necessarily benefit the society. If a more stringent environmental regulation causes incumbent eco-industrial firms to reduce their individual output, it gives rise to an inefficient number of active firms in the eco-industry. In this case, the environmental tax should be set below the marginal social cost of pollution.;The last essay analyzes the impact of trade liberalization in environmental goods and services on the quality of the environment, in an importing country of these abatement goods and services. We develop a two-country model (a rich country and a poor one) where an international monopolistic eco-industry, located in the rich country, interacts with polluting industries of both countries. Comparative statics and numerical simulations show that a reduction in trade barriers could result in a less stringent environmental regulation in the importing country of environmental goods and services. Consequently, pollution could actually rise in this country, in spite of a better access to environmental goods and services.;The first essay provides a general description of the eco-industry. First, we point out the definitional problem of this industry. Second, we highlight the policy implications of the recent developments in the literature in environmental economics that explicitly incorporate environmental outsourcing. We conclude that previous analyses of environmental policy-making, which do not consider the presence of the eco-industry, have missed key aspects of the supply and cost of abatement goods and services.;Key words: Environmental taxation, eco-industry, environmental goods and services, market structure, imperfect competition, successive oligopolies, Cournot oligopoly with free entry, trade in environmental goods and services.