Essays on environmental regulation under imperfect competition.

Summary This thesis covers two topics: the design of pollution permits and waste management. The first chapter analyzes the implementation of pollution permits. The chapter focuses on the distributional impacts associated with the stringency of the free allocation based on current production when two sectors are covered by the permit market and the cap remains constant. A new type of profit increase in sectors that are not exposed to international competition has been theoretically demonstrated. The second chapter deals with the issue of differentiation in the allocation of permits in different regions, linked to the possibility of firms to relocate. The conditions under which welfare decreases with offshoring are determined. In this case, free distributions of permits can be used to prevent firms from offshoring. The third chapter compares the effectiveness of extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs with the effectiveness of an ex-ante tax. The tax allows more ex-ante flexibility with respect to market conditions, but EPR allows more ex-post adjustment to cost realizations. Thus, the relative effectiveness of EPR increases with cost uncertainty and market competitiveness.