• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.27-67
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• 2012

This paper analyzed the effect of transaction costs on the prices and trading volumes at the initial stage of emission markets and also examined how the size of the effect differs depending on the characteristics of the transactions. We built trading protocols modeling a recursive process to search the trading partner and make transactions with several behavioral assumptions considering the situations of early markets. The simulations results show that adding transaction costs resulted in reduction of trading volumes. Furthermore, the speed of reduction in trading volume to the increase of transaction costs is higher when there is scale economy. With a certain level of scale economy, the trading volumes abruptly fall down to almost zero as the transaction cost gets over a certain level. This suggests the possibility of a failed market. Since the scale economy is thought to be significant in the early stage of emission trading market, it is desirable to design a trading system that maximizes trading volumes and minimizes unit transaction costs at the outset. One of the alternatives to meet these conditions is to establish a centralized exchange and take measures to increase trading volumes.