El coste de oportunidad de los permisos de CO2

Los de RFF han llevado a cabo un experimento para ver hasta qué punto los agentes internalizan el precio del CO2 en sus decisiones, dependiendo de si se regalan los permisos o si se subastan. Las conclusiones:

In the first rounds of the experiments, participants displayed a range of behaviors. While many failed to incorporate the value of free allowances in their pricing strategies, the others who did earned substantially higher profits. Over the course of repeated experiments, individuals learned from each others’ success and the long-term outcome evolved toward that predicted by economic theory: the method of allocation had a diminishing effect on the final price. The results show that while passing through the cost of freely allocated allowances is theoretically superior, recognizing opportunity costs is not intuitive, which may explain why policymakers have opted for free allocation in the past.