IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32459.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Voluntary Emission Restraints in Developing Economies: The Role of Trade Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Lorenzo Caliendo
  • Marcelo Dolabella
  • Mauricio Moreira
  • Matthew Murillo
  • Fernando Parro

Abstract

We study the role of trade policy in one of the most pressing climate policy challenges that developing countries face: meeting voluntary emission restraints (VERs). To do so, we develop a general equilibrium trade model that extends Caliendo and Parro (2015) in three dimensions. First, we model extractive sectors that feature a continuum of producers with heterogeneous productivity, demanding labor, dirty natural resources, and intermediate goods from all industries. Second, we consider that production generates different amounts of emissions across sectors and countries, and households experience disutility from carbon emissions, modeled as a pure externality as in Shapiro (2021). Third, we model a general set of taxes along the value chain—on production, intermediate and final consumption, and on labor—which allows for different options of carbon taxes and tariffs that impact emissions and other outcomes in general equilibrium. In our quantitative analysis, we focus on two groups of policies: those that are in the traditional realm of trade policy, related to tariff reform and potential emission biases; and those that combine a Pigouvian carbon tax with border adjustments. Our main findings point to a nuanced role of trade policy as a climate policy in developing economies. Although it is effective in mitigating emission leakages, such leakages are small in magnitude, and border adjustment tariffs have collateral effects in terms of trade declines, and in many countries, welfare losses. These findings contrast with the implications of climate policy in large economies, where emission leakages are much more significant and the impact on trade less costly. Our main results also indicate that carbon taxes and tariffs will not be enough for most developing countries to meet their net-zero emission targets dictated by the VERs.

Suggested Citation

  • Lorenzo Caliendo & Marcelo Dolabella & Mauricio Moreira & Matthew Murillo & Fernando Parro, 2024. "Voluntary Emission Restraints in Developing Economies: The Role of Trade Policy," NBER Working Papers 32459, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32459
    Note: ITI
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32459.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A10 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - General
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F18 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Environment
    • F6 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32459. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.