IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeeman/v72y2015icp137-163.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environmental policy and misallocation: The productivity effect of intensity standards

Author

Listed:
  • Tombe, Trevor
  • Winter, Jennifer

Abstract

Firm-level idiosyncratic policy distortions misallocate resources between firms, lowering aggregate productivity. Many environmental policies create such distortions; in particular, output-based intensity standards (which limit firms energy use or emissions per unit of output) are easier for high-productivity firms to achieve. We investigate the productivity effect of intensity standards using a tractable general-equilibrium model featuring multiple sectors and firm-level heterogeneity. Qualitatively, we demonstrate that intensity standards are always inferior to uniform taxes, as they misallocate both dirty and clean inputs across firms and sectors, which lowers productivity. Quantitatively, we calibrate the model to US data and show that these productivity losses can be large.

Suggested Citation

  • Tombe, Trevor & Winter, Jennifer, 2015. "Environmental policy and misallocation: The productivity effect of intensity standards," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 137-163.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:72:y:2015:i:c:p:137-163
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2015.06.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069615000480
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parry, Ian W.H. & Williams, Roberton C., 2011. "Moving U.S. Climate Policy Forward: Are Carbon Taxes the Only Good Alternative?," Discussion Papers dp-11-02, Resources For the Future.
    2. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2008. "Policy Distortions and Aggregate Productivity with Heterogeneous Plants," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 707-720, October.
    3. Loren Brandt & Trevor Tombe & Xiadong Zhu, 2013. "Factor Market Distortions Across Time, Space, and Sectors in China," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 39-58, January.
    4. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2006. "Globalization and the Gains From Variety," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 121(2), pages 541-585.
    5. Fischer, Carolyn & Springborn, Michael, 2011. "Emissions targets and the real business cycle: Intensity targets versus caps or taxes," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 352-366.
    6. di Giovanni, Julian & Levchenko, Andrei A. & Rancière, Romain, 2011. "Power laws in firm size and openness to trade: Measurement and implications," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 42-52, September.
    7. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    8. Newell, Richard G & Stavins, Robert N, 2003. "Cost Heterogeneity and the Potential Savings from Market-Based Policies," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 43-59, January.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & Veronica Guerrieri, 2008. "Capital Deepening and Nonbalanced Economic Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(3), pages 467-498, June.
    10. Brian R. Copeland & M. Scott Taylor, 1994. "North-South Trade and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 109(3), pages 755-787.
    11. Eric Bartelsman & John Haltiwanger & Stefano Scarpetta, 2013. "Cross-Country Differences in Productivity: The Role of Allocation and Selection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 305-334, February.
    12. Stephen P. Holland, 2009. "Taxes and Trading versus Intensity Standards: Second-Best Environmental Policies with Incomplete Regulation (Leakage) or Market Power," NBER Working Papers 15262, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Stephen P. Holland & Jonathan E. Hughes & Christopher R. Knittel, 2009. "Greenhouse Gas Reductions under Low Carbon Fuel Standards?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 106-146, February.
    14. Ross McKitrick, 2005. "Decentralizing a Regulatory Standard Expressed in Ratio or Intensity Form," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 43-52.
    15. di Giovanni, Julian & Levchenko, Andrei A., 2013. "Firm entry, trade, and welfare in Zipf's world," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 283-296.
    16. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Peter J. Klenow, 2009. "Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1403-1448.
    17. Frans Vries & Bouwe Dijkstra & Matthew McGinty, 2014. "On Emissions Trading and Market Structure: Cap-and-Trade versus Intensity Standards," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 58(4), pages 665-682, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Yi Li & Lili Ding & Yongliang Yang, 2020. "Can the Introduction of an Environmental Target Assessment Policy Improve the TFP of Textile Enterprises? A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on the Huai River Basin in China," Sustainability, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 12(4), pages 1-19, February.
    2. Schaufele, Brandon, 2019. "Demand Shocks Change the Excess Burden From Carbon Taxes," MPRA Paper 92132, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Udo Kreickemeier & Philipp M. Richter, 2019. "Environmental Policy and Firm Selection in the Open Economy," CESifo Working Paper Series 7725, CESifo.
    4. Yuping Deng & Yanrui Wu & Helian Xu, 2019. "Environmental Regulation and Export Product Quality: Evidence from Chinese Firms," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 19-14, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    5. Sarah Dobson & Jennifer Winter, 2018. "Assessing Policy Support for Emissions-Intensive and Trade-Exposed Industries," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 11(28), October.
    6. Andersen, Dana C., 2016. "Accounting for Firm Exit and Loss of Variety in the Welfare Cost of Regulations," Working Papers 2016-9, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    7. Andersen, Dana C., 2018. "Accounting for loss of variety and factor reallocations in the welfare cost of regulations," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 69-94.
    8. Manish Pandey & Wenbiao Cai, 2016. "Regulation under Financial Frictions: A Quantitative Analysis of Taxes versus Tradable Permits," Departmental Working Papers 2016-01, The University of Winnipeg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Energy intensity; Energy tax; Productivity;

    JEL classification:

    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • E6 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook

    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:eee:jeeman:v:72:y:2015:i:c:p:137-163. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Haili He). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622870 .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.