Matti Liski

Forward trading and collusion in oligopoly

We consider an infinitely-repeated oligopoly in which at each period firms not only serve the spot market by either competing in prices or quantities but also have the opportunity to trade forward contracts. Contrary to the pro-competitive results of finite-horizon models, we find that the possibility of forward trading allows firms to sustain collusive profits that otherwise would not be possible. The result holds both for price and quantity competition and follows because (collusive) contracting of future sales is more effective in deterring deviations from the collusive plan than in inducing the previously identified pro-competitive effects.

Can carbon tax eat OPEC's rents?

Abstract We consider the optimal emission tax for a stock pollutant when the pollutant flow is also regulated by a resource-exporting cartel. We consolidate, clarify, and generalize a set of previous results to obtain clear isolation of the Pigouvian and trade-policy components of the tax. Because of the trade-policy component, the tax can shift more rents from the cartel than the pollution causes damage-related costs. This leads to the possibility that the pollution problem accompanied by the coordination of taxation can bring about net benefits at the expense of the cartel.

Strategic Resource Dependence

We consider a situation where an exhaustible-resource seller faces demand from a buyer who has a substitute but there is a time-to-build delay for the substitute. We find that in this simple framework the basic implications of the Hotelling model (1931) are reversed: over time the stock declines but supplies increase up to the point where the buyer decides to switch. Under such a threat of demand change, the supply does not reflect the current resource scarcity but it compensates the buyer for delaying the transition to the substitute. The analysis suggests a perspective on costs of oil dependence.

Market power in an exhaustible resource market: The case of storable pollution permits

Motivated by the structure of existing pollution permit markets, we study the equilibrium path that results from allocating an initial stock of storable permits to an agent, or a group of agents, in a position to exercise market power. A large seller of permits exercises market power no differently than a large supplier of an exhaustible resource. However, whenever the large agents endowment falls short of his efficient endowment – allocation profile that would exactly cover his emissions along the perfectly competitive path – market power is greatly mitigated by a commitment problem, much like in a durable-goods monopoly. We illustrate our theory with two applications: the US sulphur market and the international carbon market that may eventually develop beyond the Kyoto Protocol.

Increasing Returns and Cycles in Fishing

We consider optimal fishery management under the assumption of increasing returns that is supported by previous empirical evidence. We improve the tractability and realism of the previous approaches by introducing flow adjustment costs on changes in harvest rate. Our framework is the first to provide a link between stable limit cycle policies and increasing returns in harvesting. The type of the harvest policy depends on flow adjustment costs: for relatively costly adjustments the usual steady state harvest policy is conceivable, whereas for relatively cheap adjustments the harvest policy is cyclical. We also show a connection between chattering control policies and limit cycles, which helps us to develop a clear economic meaning for cyclical harvesting.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Carbon Prices for the Next Hundred Years

World income grows fast without verifiable climate-change impacts on the economy. The growth spell can end if climate impacts turn real but this can take decades to learn. We develop a tractable stochastic climate-economy model with a hidden-state impact process to evaluate the contributions of the expanding economy and changing impact beliefs to the social cost of carbon. Taking a dataset of estimates for the social cost as a representation of beliefs, we assess how robust climate policies are to the delays of hard information. The carbon price should rise with income to the next century, even without observed impacts. The carbon price should grow faster than the economy as long as climate warming is not enough for generating impacts that are informative about the true social cost.

Taxing average emissions to overcome the shutdown problem

Abstract The paper shows that the optimal regulation of stock pollutants can require fluctuating emissions even in the absence of uncertainty. The optimum cannot be implemented by the usual Pigouvian flow tax since it leads to a shutdown problem. A remedy for the problem is to use a linear tax given by a mechanism that effectively taxes average emissions over time. An alternative is to use tax schedules depending on cumulative emissions over a short period of time. A calibration using cost estimates of greenhouse gases suggests that potential gains from fluctuating carbon emissions are considerable.

Games and Resources

This article presents a sequence of simple and related models to analyze the strategic use of natural resources. Game theory is the natural tool for such an analysis, whether the resource is private or publicly owned, whether it is renewable or exhaustible, whether the game is static or dynamic, and whether or not the users can strategically invest in technologies. Equilibrium extraction is too large and comes too early for public resources, but the opposite is true for private resources. The effects add up nicely when the resource has both private and public-good aspects.

Forward trading in exhaustible-resource oligopoly

We analyze oligopolistic exhaustible-resource depletion when firms can trade forward contracts on deliveries, a market structure prevalent in many resource commodity markets. We find that this organization of trade has substantial implications for resource depletion. As firms’ interactions become infinitely frequent, resource stocks become fully contracted and the symmetric oligopolistic equilibrium converges to the perfectly competitive Hotelling (1931) outcome. Asymmetries in stock holdings allow firms to partially escape the procompetitive effect of contracting: a large stock provides commitment to leave a fraction of the stock uncontracted. In contrast, a small stock provides commitment to sell early, during the most profitable part of the equilibrium.

Frictions in Project-Based Supply of Permits

Emissions trading in climate change can entail large overall cost savings and transfers between developed and developing countries. However, the search for acceptable JI or CDM projects implies a deviation from the perfect market framework used in previous estimations. Our model combines the search market for projects with a frictionless permit market to quantify the supply-side frictions in the CO2 market. We also decompose the effects of frictions into the effects of search friction, bargaining, and bilateralism. A calibration using previous cost estimates of CO2 reductions illustrate changes in cost savings and allocative implications.