Petchey's (2015) Extension of Oates & Schwab's (1988) Efficiency Result Revisited
CESifo, Munich, 2017
CESifo Working Paper No. 6315
Oates and Schwab (1988) consider an economy with mobil capital and jurisdictions that suffer from local pollution. They show that welfare-maximizing jurisdictions implement the first-best, if they take prices as given and have at their disposal a capital tax and an environmental standard. Petchey (2015) claims that the efficiency result of Oates and Schwab can be extended to a large price-influencing jurisdiction. In the present note we show that the concept of Pareto efficiency cannot be applied in Petchey’s model. Next, we expand his model by a second jurisdiction and prove that Petchey’s claim is false, i.e. we show that the allocation implemented by a large price-influencing jurisdiction that sets an environmental standard and a capital tax fails to be (Pareto) efficient.
Public Finance
Resources and Environment