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1、市场结构和外部因素：英格兰和威尔士的水污染事件外文翻译 原文:MARKET STRUCTURE AND EXTERNALITIES:THE CASE OF WATER POLLUTION INENGLAND AND WALESD. J. STOREYExternality theorists have significantly omitted a number of topics, now within the mainstream of economics, from their study. Where a firm imposes external costs upon others
2、a publicly financed authority is assumed to be established which either imposes effluent taxes or physical controls upon dischargers. Theorists, however, presume that firms only incur abatement costs in pollution control, i.e. firms equate marginal abatement costs to the tax rate or accept unquestio
3、ningly the physical limits imposed upon them by the authority. The opportunity for firms in practice to exploit, through appeals, tribunals, etc., the enforcement procedures has demonstrated the naivety of such an assumption. Hence any theory of externalities assuming purely passive roles for both d
4、ischargers and enforcement bodies must be inadequate.1. INTRODUCTIONA second major criticism of externality theorists is their presumption that all polluters are profit imizers cost minimizers operating in a perfectly competitive selling market. Even in the few cases where the perfect competition as
5、sumption is relaxed, profit imization remains the presumed motivation.This paper tries to examine the effect of relaxing both these assumptions. It demonstrates it is possible to incorporate within the profit imizing theory of the firm the opportunity for the use of resources in opposing the authori
6、ty and shows such theory predicts that firms in non-competitive industries are likely to have an advantage in such conflicts over small competitive companies. However, when the profit imizing hypothesis is replaced by one suggesting that managers may have similar preferences at work to those which t
7、hey have as a private citizen, opposite predictions are derived. Here discretionary expenditure?a manifestation of inefficiency would be greatest where market imperfections are greatestTo test whether either of these hypotheses are valid, data on expenditure on water pollution control by industries
8、are compared with indices of market imperfection. This shows as theory would predict that, ceteris paribus, expenditure on pollution control is initially high in the very competitive industries but falls with increasing concentration. It then rises at high levels of concentration where the opportuni
9、ty exists for management to exercise discretion in favour of environmental expenditure.2. THE PROFIT IMIZING POLLUTERWe presume that a firm wishes to discharge effluent to a river, which in the UK requires the permission of the Regional Water Authority. The authority if it agrees to such a discharge
10、 is likely to impose physical controls upon the discharger of the form that the concentration or total quantity of pollutant i shall not exceed K*The firm faced with such a constraint in practice will decide whether it is worthwhile utilizing resources in an effort to obtain a less severe restrictio
11、n K. The resources which would be used are those of technical and legal staff who would provide technical data on production processes and on proposed and alternative effluent control procedures. These data would include costs of installation and operation of procedures to meet K* compared with thos
12、e to achieve A. Where relevant the effect on the overall viability of the company would also be included. The employment of lawyers, should the matter have to be decided by the Secretary of State for the environment, would also be necessary. In addition the company may incur costs in the form of del
13、ays in starting production where a formal appeal is lodged.Posner has modeled the case of the individual considering whether to take a case to law. We shall modify his analysis only marginally to examine the case of the firms decision whether or not to appeal against its consent condition.We have se
14、en that opposing the authority can be expensive and uncertain and that traditionally it has been assumed that only firms of large absolute size are likely to have access to resources to be used in this manner. More importantly it can be argued that in a perfectly competitive industry the production
15、and effluent control techniques will, by definition, be identical.Hence if one discharger were to undertake appeals and obtain a more lax consent there is no way in which it could exclude its competitors from claiming parity of treatment. Equally the authority knows that if it allows relatively lax
16、conditions for the pure monopolist it will not be inundated by requests for similar treatment since such producers may be treated as special cases.Hence the hypothesis is presented that the less competitive industries will receive more favorable treatment from the enforcing authority. An example of this is quoted by Ackerman et al. i in discussions of the allocation of loads discharged to the Delaware River, USA. Ackerman found the two mo
