Environmental Technology Transfer in a Cournot Duopoly: The Case of Fixed-Fee Licensing

This study considers a Cournot duopoly market in which a clean firm can transfer its less polluting technology to a dirty firm through a fixed-fee licensing contract. We analyze the impacts of emissions taxes on the incentives of firms to transfer technology as well as on the total pollution level, and examine the properties of the optimal emissions tax policy. We first show that higher emissions taxes weaken incentives for technology transfer and that this can lead to a perverse increase in the level of total pollution. We then compare the optimal emissions tax when technology licensing is possible with that when licensing is infeasible and show that the relationship between the optimal tax rate and the degree of the initial technology gap between firms when licensing is possible can be the opposite of that when licensing is infeasible.