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Capacity decisions with demand fluctuations and carbon leakage

Author

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  • Guy Meunier

    (X-DEP-ECO - Département d'Économie de l'École Polytechnique - X - École polytechnique, ALISS - Alimentation et sciences sociales - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique)

  • Jean-Pierre Ponssard

    (X-DEP-ECO - Département d'Économie de l'École Polytechnique - X - École polytechnique)

Abstract

For carbon-intensive, internationally-traded industrial goods, a unilateral increase in the domestic CO2 price may result in the reduction of the domestic production but an increase of imports. In such sectors as electricity, cement or steel, the trade ows result more from short-term regional disequilibria between supply and demand than from international competition. This paper formalizes this empirical observation and characterizes its impact on leakage. Domestic fi rms invest in home plants under uncertainty; then, as uncertainty unfolds, they may source the home market from their home plants or from imports. We prove that there would be no leakage in the short-term (without capacity adaptation) but there would be in the long-term (with capacity adaption). Furthermore, the larger the uncertainty the larger the leakage is. We also characterize the impacts of uncertainty on the (short-term and long-term) pass-through rates. In the concluding section we discuss the implications of these results for the evaluation of climate policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Guy Meunier & Jean-Pierre Ponssard, 2013. "Capacity decisions with demand fluctuations and carbon leakage," Working Papers hal-00347650, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00347650
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00347650v3
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    Cited by:

    1. Leroux, Justin & Spiro, Daniel, 2018. "Leading the unwilling: Unilateral strategies to prevent arctic oil exploration," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 125-149.
    2. Mohamed Amine Boutabba & Sandrine Lardic, 2017. "EU Emissions Trading Scheme, competitiveness and carbon leakage: new evidence from cement and steel industries," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 255(1), pages 47-61, August.
    3. Meunier, Guy & Ponssard, Jean-Pierre & Quirion, Philippe, 2014. "Carbon leakage and capacity-based allocations: Is the EU right?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 262-279.
    4. Frédéric Branger & Jean-Pierre Ponssard & Oliver Sartor & Misato Sato, 2015. "EU ETS, Free Allocations, and Activity Level Thresholds: The Devil Lies in the Details," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(3), pages 401-437.
    5. Elisabetta Allevi & Giorgia Oggioni & Rossana Riccardi & Marco Rocco, 2013. "A spatial competitive analysis: the carbon leakage effect on the cement industry under the European Emissions Trading Scheme," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 899, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    6. Gregory Cook & Jean-Pierre Ponssard, 2011. "A proposal for the renewal of sectoral approaches building on the Cement Sustainability Initiative," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(5), pages 1246-1256, September.
    7. Allevi, E. & Conejo, A.J. & Oggioni, G. & Riccardi, R. & Ruiz, C., 2018. "Evaluating the strategic behavior of cement producers: An equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 264(2), pages 717-731.
    8. Jean-Pierre Ponssard & Catherine Thomas, 2010. "Capacity Investment under Demand Uncertainty. An Empirical Study of the US Cement Industry, 1994-2006," CESifo Working Paper Series 3166, CESifo.
    9. Pegels, Anna, 2016. "Taxing carbon as an instrument of green industrial policy in developing countries," IDOS Discussion Papers 23/2016, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    10. Guy Meunier & Jean‐Pierre Ponssard & Catherine Thomas, 2016. "Capacity Investment under Demand Uncertainty: The Role of Imports in the U.S. Cement Industry," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 455-486, April.
    11. E. Allevi & G. Oggioni & R. Riccardi & M. Rocco, 2017. "An equilibrium model for the cement sector: EU-ETS analysis with power contracts," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 255(1), pages 63-93, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Capacity decisions; Carbon leakage; Demand fluctuations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D92 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice, Investment, Capacity, and Financing
    • 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
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

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