Climate change and externalities. a. How is the issue of climate change related to the concept of externalities? What is the externality? What are the relevant markets? b. Provide an example of a market that features this externality. Assuming there is no intervention to correct for the externality, compare the market allocation to the efficient allocation. Does the market produce too much? Too little? Is the market outcome efficient? c. What is the relationship between the marginal private cost of production in this market and the marginal social cost? Explain.

Climate change and externalities. a. How is the issue of climate change related to the concept of externalities? What is the externality? What are the relevant markets? b. Provide an example of a market that features this externality. Assuming there is no intervention to correct for the externality, compare the market allocation to the efficient allocation. Does the market produce too much? Too little? Is the market outcome efficient? c. What is the relationship between the marginal private cost of production in this market and the marginal social cost? Explain.

ECON MICRO

5th Edition

ISBN:9781337000536

Author:William A. McEachern

Publisher:William A. McEachern

Chapter17: Externalities And The Environment

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 2.3P: (Negative Externalities) Suppose you wish to reduce a negative externality by imposing a tax on the...

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Suppose a city releases 16 million gallons of raw sewage into a nearby lake. Table 12.8 shows the total costs of cleaning up the sewage to different levels, together with the total benefits of doing so. (Benefits include environmental, recreational, health, and industrial benefits.) Using the information in Table 12.8, calculate the marginal costs and marginal benefits of reducing sewage emissions for this city. See Production, Costs and Industry Structure if you need a refresher on how to calculate marginal costs. What is the optimal level of sewage for this city? Why not just pass a law that films can emit zero sewage? After all, the total benefits of zero emissions exceed the total costs.
In what ways (it) company investments in research and development create positive externalities?
A country called Sherwood is very heavily covered with a forest of 50,000 trees. There are proposals to clear some of Sherwoods forest and grow com, but obtaining this additional economic output will have an environmental cost from reducing the number of trees. Table 12.11 shows possible combinations of economic output and environmental protection. Sketch a graph of a production possibility frontier with environmental quality on the horizontal axis, measured by the number of trees, and the quantity of economic output, measured in corn, on the vertical axis. Which choices display productive efficiency? How can you tell? Which choices show allocative efficiency? How can you tell? In the choice between T and R, decide which one is better. Why? In the choice between T and S, can you say which one is better, and why? If you had to guess, which choice would you think is more likely to represent a command-and-control environmental policy and which choice is more likely to represent a market-oriented environmental policy, choice Q or S? Why?
Name two public goods and explain why they are public goods.
Classify the following pollution-control policies as command-and-control or market incentive based. A state emissions tax on the quantity of carbon emitted by each firm. The federal government requires domestic auto companies to improve car emissions by 2020. The EPA sets national standards for water quality. A city sells permits to films that allow them to emit a specified quantity of pollution. The federal government pays fishermen to preserve salmon.
For each of your answers to Exercise 12.2, will equilibrium price rise or fall or stay the same?
Refer to Table 12.2. The externality created by the refrigerator production was 100. However, once we accounted for both the private and additional external costs, the market price increased by only 50. If the external costs were 100 why did the price only increase by 50 when we accounted for all costs?
What arguments d0 low-income countries make in international discussions of global environmental clean-up?
(External Costs with Variable Technology) Think of an industry that pollutes the water and has access to variable technology for reducing that pollution. Graphically illustrate and explain the impact of each of the following, other things constant, on the optimal level of water quality: a. New evidence is discovered about a greater risk of cancer from water pollution. b. The cost of pollution-control equipment increases. c. A technological improvement reduces the cost of pollution control.
Suppose you want to put a dollar value on the external costs of carbon emissions from a power plant. What information or data would you obtain to measure the external [not social] cost?
(Negative Externalities) Suppose you wish to reduce a negative externality by imposing a tax on the activity that creates that externality. When the amount of the externality produced per unit of output increases as output increases, the correct tax can be determined by using a demand-supply diagram; show this. Assume that the marginal private cost curve slopes upward. Negative Externalities: The Market for Electricity in the Midwest:
In the Land of Purity, there is only one form of pollution, called gunk. Table 12.14 shows possible combinations of economic output and reduction of gunk, depending on what kinds of environmental regulations you choose. Sketch a graph of a production possibility frontier with environmental quality on the horizontal axis, measured by the percentage reduction of gunk, and with the quantity of economic output on the vertical axis. Which choices display productive efficiency? How can you tell? Which choices show allocative efficiency? How can you tell? In the choice between K and L, can you say which one is better and why? In the choice between K. and N, can you say which one is better, and why? If you had to guess, which choice would you think is move likely to represent a command-and-control environmental policy and which choice is more likely to represent a market-oriented environmental policy, choice L or M? Why?