Comparative research on environmental policy instruments: Enterprise emission abatement perspective.

The enterprise optimal plan model and comparative analysis are adopted in this paper to analyze the effects of pollution taxes, marketable emission permits, pollution standards and abatement subsidies on enterprise emission abatement, technology adoption incentives, the aggregate emission and the implement cost of the four environmental policy instruments. Conclusions are as follows: the major influences of enterprise abatement are technology adoption ability and the rigorousness of environmental policy; the major influences of the enterprise violation are the rigorousness of environmental policy and the government monitoring while independent of abatement technology adoption. From the technology adoption incentives, pollution standards with perfect compliance is higher than pollution standards with imperfect compliance which is higher than pollution taxes, pollution taxes is equal to abatement subsidies which is higher than tradable emission permit; from the control on the aggregate emission, on the possibility of technology improvements, pollution taxes, abatement subsidies and pollution standards will be the stone, however, tradable emission permit is the worst, if the enterprises maintain the current technology, pollution taxes, abatement subsidies, marketable pollution permits and pollution standards will have the same policy effects. From the enforcement cost of different environmental policy instruments, pollution taxes, abatement subsidies and pollution standards are the same, while tradable emission permit will be the lowest in enforcement cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]