Premium
Réguler les agents altruistes .
Author(s) -
Heyes Anthony,
Kapur Sandeep
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
canadian journal of economics/revue canadienne d'économique
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1540-5982
pISSN - 0008-4085
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5982.2010.01630.x
Subject(s) - altruism (biology) , externality , economics , microeconomics , welfare , population , public economics , social psychology , psychology , medicine , market economy , environmental health
Altruism or ‘regard for others’ can encourage self‐restraint among generators of negative externalities, thereby mitigating the externality problem. We explore how introducing impure altruism into standard regulatory settings alters regulatory prescriptions. The optimal calibration of both quantitative controls and externality taxes is affected. It also leads to surprising results on the comparative performance of instruments. Under quantity‐based regulation, welfare is increasing in the propensity for altruism in the population; under price‐based regulation, the relationship is non‐monotonic. Price‐based regulation is preferred when the population is either predominantly altruistic or predominantly selfish; quantity‐based regulation is preferred for cases in between.