Estimating Joint Abatement Cost Function and Cost-effective Emission Charges for Paper and Pulp Industry in India

This paper makes an attempt to estimate the joint abatement cost function for major water pollutants of paper and pulp industry in India, using different alternative functional forms and to estimate the emission charges for each pollutant under the cost minimization principle. It is observed that simple log-log explains the observed behavior better than any other functional form. It is suggested that more cost-effective regulatory instruments would produce considerably better environmental quality at a lower over all cost, which leads to significant saving under an emission charge system.