Current Position: Lecturer of Economics Room: 3.21 Telephone: +44 (0) 1603 591090 Email: g.perino@uea.ac.uk

Grischa Perino is a Lecturer in Economics in the School of Economics at the University of East Anglia. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Bonn, earned a M.Sc. in Environmental and Resource Economics from University College London and a Diplom-Volkswirt (equ. to a M.A. in Economics) from the University of Freiburg. His Ph.D. in Economics is from the University of Heidelberg. His personal webpage can be found here.

Research

Grischa has research interests in environmental economics and regulatory economics with a special emphasis on instrument choice, the design of institutions and the economics of environmental innovation.

Journal Articles

How Delegation Improves Commitment, Economics Letters, accepted.

On Backstops and Boomerangs: Environmental R&D under Technological Uncertainty (with Timo Goeschl), Energy Economics, 31 (5), 800-809 2009.

Link to article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2009.02.006

Wasting Innovation – Barriers to Entry and European Regulation on Waste Electronic Equipment (with Dario Mock), European Journal of Law and Economics, 26(1), 1-10, 2008
      Link to Article: http://www.springerlink.com/content/r475823354837451/

The merits of new pollutants and how to get them when patents are granted, Environmental and Resource Economics, 40(3), 313-327, 2008
      Link to Article: http://www.springerlink.com/content/2946476536j51xl1/fulltext.pdf

Innovation without magic bullets: Stock pollution and R&D sequences (with Timo Goeschl), Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 54(2), 146-161, 2007
      Link to Article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2007.03.001

Abstract of Published Papers

McCallum (1995, AER P&P) conjectures that delegation merely relocates the commitment problem but does not solve it. In a model where delegation and specific policies are subject to the same commitment technology it is shown that this conjecture holds if optimal ex-ante policies do not change with additional information arriving over time. However, with a flexibility-credibility trade-off delegation improves credibility. Economics Letters, accepted.

On Backstops and Boomerangs: Environmental R&D under Technological Uncertainty (with Timo Goeschl), Energy Economics, forthcoming

In areas such as climate change, the recent economic literature has been emphasizing and addressing the pervasive presence of uncertainty. This paper considers a new and salient form of uncertainty, namely uncertainty regarding the environmental characteristics of 'green' innovations. Here, R&D may generate both backstop technologies and technologies that turn out to involve a new pollution problem ('boomerangs'). In the optimum, R&D will therefore typically be undertaken more than once. Extending results from multi-stage optimal control theory, we present a tractable model with a full characterization of the optimal pollution and R&D policies and the role of uncertainty. In this setting, (i) the optimal R&D program is defined by a research trigger condition in which the decision-maker's belief about the probability of finding a backstop enters in an intuitive way; (ii) a decreasing probability of finding a backstop leads to the toleration of higher pollution levels, slower R&D, a slower turnover of technologies, and an ambiguous effect on the expected number of innovations; (iii) learning about the probability of a backstop is driven by failures only and leads to decreasing research incentives; and (iv) small to moderate delays in the resolution of technological uncertainty do not affect the optimal policy.

Wasting Innovation – Barriers to Entry and European Regulation on Waste Electronic Equipment (with Dario Mock), European Journal of Law and Economics, 26(1), 1-10, 2008

The European Directive on Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment 2002/96/EC distorts incentives in regulated markets. Treatment of ‚historical waste’ —i.e. products sold prior to 13 August 2005—is financed by all firms in the market at the time of disposal. This stimulates excessive pre-regulation output by incumbents for two reasons: a costs sharing effect and entry deterrence. Entry deterrence is achieved by raising the common costs of waste disposal. Entry is a main driver of innovation in the affected industries. The feasibility of a first best policy is discussed and an alternative rule superior to the status quo is presented.

The merits of new pollutants and how to get them when patents are granted, Environmental and Resource Economics, 40(3), 313-327, 2008

The performance ofmarket based environmental regulation is affected by patents and vice versa. This interaction is studied for a type of innovation where a new technology reduces emissions of a specific pollutant but at the same time causes a new type of damage. If the new pollutant associated with this technology is sufficiently different from existing ones such that marginal damage is increasing in each of them but additive across pollutants, a diversification of the pollution portfolio is socially desirable. In a situation where the incentives to develop such a technology are created by patents, the efficiency of permits is affected by monopoly pricing of the patent-holding firm. This result carries over to other types of innovation. The performance of taxes is limited by either the inability to implement specific pollution mixes or monopoly pricing. For constant returns to scale at the industry level the combined use of taxes and permits ensures the first best mix of technologies and provides positive research incentives.

Innovation without magic bullets: Stock pollution and R&D sequences (with Timo Goeschl), Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 54(2), 146-161, 2007

We study the optimal R&D trajectory in a setting where new technologies are never perfect backstops in the sense that there is no perfectly clean technology that eventually solves the pollution problem once and for all. New technologies have strings attached, i.e. each emits a specific stock pollutant. Damages are convex in individual pollution stocks but additive across stocks, creating gains from diversification. The research and pollution policies are tightly linked in such a setting. We derive the optimal pollution path and R&D program. Pollution stocks overshoot and in the long-run all available technologies produce. Research is sequential and the optimal portfolio of technologies is finite.