IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cje/issued/v41y2008i3p817-837.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Free trade and the burden of domestic policy

Author

Listed:
  • Sumeet Gulati

Abstract

Consider a small economy facing accession to a exogenously defined trade agreement. Before accession, the government controls trade and pollution policy. After accession, it retains control over pollution policy, but must allow free trade in all goods. This is a choice many governments face while joining trade agreements today. They decide whether greater market access to other members is more valuable than control over trade policy. I ask two questions. All else being equal what happens to environmental policy after accession? Second, what affects the choice of accession and how does this choice impact aggregate welfare? I show that a loss in control over trade policy alters the political incentives determining environmental policy. Before accession, producers can transfer a portion of their burden of environmental regulation to consumers through price increases. After accession the same regulation is borne entirely by producers. Owing to the change in burden, there exist plausible conditions under which the adoption of free trade can lead to more stringent environmental regulation, a reduction in the preferential treatment of special interest groups, and an increase in aggregate welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Sumeet Gulati, 2008. "Free trade and the burden of domestic policy," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 41(3), pages 817-837, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:41:y:2008:i:3:p:817-837
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5982.2008.00487.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2008.00487.x
    Download Restriction: access restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2008.00487.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gulati Sumeet, 2010. "Price and Quantity Policies in a Simple Political Economy Framework," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-16, October.
    2. Per G. Fredriksson & Xenia Matschke, 2016. "Trade Liberalization and Environmental Taxation in Federal Systems," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 118(1), pages 150-167, January.
    3. Minoru Nakada, 2020. "The impact of environmental tax revenue allocation on the consequence of lobbying activities," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 335-349, December.
    4. Jung‐Ah Hwang & Yeonbae Kim, 2017. "Effects of Environmental Regulations on Trade Flow in Manufacturing Sectors: Comparison of Static and Dynamic Effects of Environmental Regulations," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(5), pages 688-706, July.
    5. Chahreddine ABBES, 2009. "When Free Trade is Good for the Environment?," EcoMod2009 21500000, EcoMod.
    6. Emma Aisbett & Magdalene Silberberger, 2021. "Tariff liberalization and product standards: Regulatory chill and race to the bottom?," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(3), pages 987-1006, July.
    7. Alain-Désiré Nimubona & Horatiu Rus, 2015. "Green Technology Transfers and Border Tax Adjustments," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 62(1), pages 189-206, September.
    8. Badulescu, Dan & Baylis, Katherine R., 2006. "Pesticide Regulation Under NAFTA: Harmonization in Process?," Commissioned Papers 24163, Canadian Agricultural Trade Policy Research Network.
    9. Olper, Alessandro, 2017. "The political economy of trade-related regulatory policy: environment and global value chain," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 5(3), February.
    10. Ederington,Josh & Ruta,Michele, 2016. "Non-tariff measures and the world trading system," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7661, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F18 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Environment
    • 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
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    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:cje:issued:v:41:y:2008:i:3:p:817-837. 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: Prof. Werner Antweiler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceaaaea.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.