IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ott/wpaper/1403e.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who Cares About Carbon Leakage? The Economics Of Border Tax Adjustments Under Incomplete Climate Treaties

Author

Listed:
  • Leslie Shiell

    (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON)

Abstract

Optimal choices of border tax adjustments (BTA) – tariffs or subsidies on imports and exports – are derived for a coalition of countries working cooperatively to abate greenhouse gas emissions, under an exogenous emissions reduction target. Under a domestic target, the optimal BTA is determined by a terms of trade effect only; therefore there is no justification for a carbon based BTA. It follows that most policy modelling papers have used the wrong baseline (constant domestic target) to test the effectiveness of carbon based BTA’s. Under a global target, the optimal BTA consists of the standard two components from earlier literature: the terms of trade component and an induced foreign emissions component. The common focus on carbon leakage as a major policy concern seems to be misplaced, since leakage represents the optimal rearrangement of production patterns, from the perspective of the coalition, in order to meet the target (domestic or global) in the least-cost manner.

Suggested Citation

  • Leslie Shiell, 2014. "Who Cares About Carbon Leakage? The Economics Of Border Tax Adjustments Under Incomplete Climate Treaties," Working Papers 1403E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ott:wpaper:1403e
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://sciencessociales.uottawa.ca/economics/sites/socialsciences.uottawa.ca.economics/files/1403e.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Winchester Niven & Paltsev Sergey & Reilly John M, 2011. "Will Border Carbon Adjustments Work?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-29, January.
    2. Rodney D. Ludema & Ian Wooton, 1994. "Cross-Border Externalities and Trade Liberalization: The Strategic Control of Pollution," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 27(4), pages 950-966, November.
    3. Boehringer Christoph & Fischer Carolyn & Rosendahl Knut Einar, 2010. "The Global Effects of Subglobal Climate Policies," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 1-35, December.
    4. James R. MARKUSEN, 2021. "International Externalities And Optimal Tax Structures," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: BROADENING TRADE THEORY Incorporating Market Realities into Traditional Models, chapter 16, pages 341-355, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Hoel Michael, 1994. "Efficient Climate Policy in the Presence of Free Riders," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 259-274, November.
    6. Roland Ismer & Karsten Neuhoff, 2007. "Border tax adjustment: a feasible way to support stringent emission trading," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 137-164, October.
    7. Schenker, Oliver & Bucher, Raphael, 2010. "On interactions of optimal climate policy and international trade. An assessment of border carbon measures," MPRA Paper 25820, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Lessmann, Kai & Marschinski, Robert & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2009. "The effects of tariffs on coalition formation in a dynamic global warming game," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 641-649, May.
    9. Ben Lockwood & John Whalley, 2010. "Carbon‐motivated Border Tax Adjustments: Old Wine in Green Bottles?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(6), pages 810-819, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhang, Zhong Xiang, 2012. "Competitiveness and Leakage Concerns and Border Carbon Adjustments," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 6(3), pages 225-287, December.
    2. Sakai, Marco & Barrett, John, 2016. "Border carbon adjustments: Addressing emissions embodied in trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 102-110.
    3. Böhringer, Christoph & Garcia-Muros, Xaquin & Cazcarro, Ignacio & Arto, Iñaki, 2017. "The efficiency cost of protective measures in climate policy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 446-454.
    4. Ghosh, Madanmohan & Luo, Deming & Siddiqui, Muhammad Shahid & Zhu, Yunfa, 2012. "Border tax adjustments in the climate policy context: CO2 versus broad-based GHG emission targeting," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(S2), pages 154-167.
    5. Michael Jakob & Robert Marschinski & Michael Hübler, 2013. "Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Trade-Theory Analysis of Leakage Under Production- and Consumption-Based Policies," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(1), pages 47-72, September.
    6. Madison Condon & Ada Ignaciuk, 2013. "Border Carbon Adjustment and International Trade: A Literature Review," OECD Trade and Environment Working Papers 2013/6, OECD Publishing.
    7. Böhringer, Christoph & Fischer, Carolyn & Rosendahl, Knut Einar, 2014. "Cost-effective unilateral climate policy design: Size matters," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 318-339.
    8. Christoph Böhringer & Knut Einar Rosendahl & Halvor Storrøsten, 2021. "Smart hedging against carbon leakage [An overview of the GTAP 9 data base]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 36(107), pages 439-484.
    9. Christoph Böhringer & Thomas F. Rutherford, 2017. "Paris after Trump: An Inconvenient Insight," CESifo Working Paper Series 6531, CESifo.
    10. Weiguang Chen & Qing Guo, 2017. "Assessing the Effect of Carbon Tariffs on International Trade and Emission Reduction of China’s Industrial Products under the Background of Global Climate Governance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-17, June.
    11. Michael Jakob & Jan Christoph Steckel & Ottmar Edenhofer, 2014. "Consumption- Versus Production-Based Emission Policies," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 297-318, October.
    12. Böhringer, Christoph & Bye, Brita & Fæhn, Taran & Rosendahl, Knut Einar, 2012. "Alternative designs for tariffs on embodied carbon: A global cost-effectiveness analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(S2), pages 143-153.
    13. Branger, Frédéric & Quirion, Philippe, 2014. "Would border carbon adjustments prevent carbon leakage and heavy industry competitiveness losses? Insights from a meta-analysis of recent economic studies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 29-39.
    14. Niven Winchester, 2018. "Can tariffs be used to enforce Paris climate commitments?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(10), pages 2650-2668, October.
    15. Christoph Böhringer & Jared C. Carbone & Thomas F. Rutherford, 2018. "Embodied Carbon Tariffs," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 120(1), pages 183-210, January.
    16. Taran Fæhn & Cathrine Hagem & Lars Lindholt & Ståle Mæland & Knut Einar Rosendahl, 2017. "Climate Policies in a Fossil Fuel Producing Country: Demand versus Supply Side Policies," The Energy Journal, , vol. 38(1), pages 77-102, January.
    17. Thomas Eichner & Rüdiger Pethig, 2019. "Bottom-up world climate policies: Preserving fossil fuel deposits vs. capping fuel consumption," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 52(3), pages 993-1035, August.
    18. Böhringer, Christoph & Rosendahl, Knut Einar & Storrøsten, Halvor Briseid, 2017. "Robust policies to mitigate carbon leakage," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 35-46.
    19. Carol McAusland & Nouri Najjar, 2015. "Carbon Footprint Taxes," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 61(1), pages 37-70, May.
    20. Bao, Qin & Tang, Ling & Zhang, ZhongXiang & Wang, Shouyang, 2013. "Impacts of border carbon adjustments on China's sectoral emissions: Simulations with a dynamic computable general equilibrium model," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 77-94.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    international environmental agreements; border tax adjustments; climate change; carbon leakage.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics

    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:ott:wpaper:1403e. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Aggey Semenov (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deottca.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.