Environmental policies with excess burden of taxation in free-entry mixed markets

Abstract

This study investigates environmental policies in free-entry mixed markets taking account of excess burden of taxation. We consider and compare the two ex-ante and ex-post tax policies in which the government chooses the optimal environmental tax before or after private firms invest fixed costs and enter the market, respectively. When the excess burden of taxation is small (large), we find that ex-post taxation imposes a lower (higher) tax level than ex-ante taxation, which induces a larger (smaller) number of firms and a higher (lower) environmental damage. We also show that the excess burden of taxation can increase the welfare, but ex-ante taxation always yields higher welfare than ex-post taxation. Finally, we show that privatization policy in a free-entry market decreases environmental damage but increases welfare only when the entry cost is low.