期刊名称：Departmental Discussion Papers / University of Glasgow, Department of Economics
出版年度：2008
卷号：1
出版社：University of Glasgow, Department of Economics
摘要：The paper examines the Porter and induced-innovation hypotheses in a firm model where: (i) the
firm has a vintage capital technology with two complementary factors, energy and capital ; (ii)
scrapping is endogenous; (iii) technological progress is energy-saving and endogenous through
purposive R&D investment; (iv) the innovation rate increases with R&D investment and
decreases with complexity; (v) the firm is subject to emission quotas which put an upper bound
on its energy consumption at any date; (vi) energy and capital prices are exogenous. Balanced
growth paths are first characterized, and a comparative static analysis is performed to study a kind
of long-term Porter and induced-innovation hypotheses. In particular, it is shown that tighter
emission quotas do not prevent firms to grow in the long-run, thanks to endogenous innovation,
but they have an inverse effect on the growth rate of profits. Some short-term dynamics are also
produced, particularly, to analyze the role of initial conditions and energy prices in optimal firm
behavior subject to environmental regulation. Among numerous results, we show that (i) firms
which are historically ¡°small¡± polluters find it optimal to massively pollute in the short run:
during the transition, new and clean machines will co-exist with old and dirty machines in the
productive sectors, implying an unambiguously dirty transition; (ii) higher energy prices induce a
shorter lifetime for capital goods but they depress investment in both new capital and R&D,
featuring a kind of reverse Hicksian mechanism.
