IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/461.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Carbon leakage under incomplete environmental regulation: An industry-level approach

Author

Listed:
  • Robert A. Ritz

Abstract

Carbon leakage is a major concern for policymakers involved with environmental initiatives such as the European Union's emissions trading scheme and similar cap-and-trade proposals in the United States, Australia, and elsewhere. This paper provides a framework for understanding the drives underlying carbon leakage at the level of an individual sector in which only a subset of firms is covered by such regulation. It provides simple formulae to estimate leakage rates using information on industry characteristics that is typically available to the analyst. Illustrative estimates for the steel industry in the EU ETS suggest carbon leakage of 25-30% or (much) higher - unless environmental-efficiency improvements by regulated firms are substantial.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert A. Ritz, 2009. "Carbon leakage under incomplete environmental regulation: An industry-level approach," Economics Series Working Papers 461, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:461
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/working_papers/paper461.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sharon Oster, 1982. "The Diffusion of Innovation among Steel Firms: The Basic Oxygen Furnace," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(1), pages 45-56, Spring.
    2. Paul Klemperer & A. Jorge Padilla, 1997. "Do Firms' Product Lines Include Too Many Varieties?," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(3), pages 472-488, Autumn.
    3. Pesendorfer, Martin, 2003. " Horizontal Mergers in the Paper Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(3), pages 495-515, Autumn.
    4. Ghemawat, Pankaj, 1993. "Commitment to a Process Innovation: Nucor, USX, and Thin-Slab Casting," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 135-161, Spring.
    5. Copeland, Brian R. & Taylor, M. Scott, 2005. "Free trade and global warming: a trade theory view of the Kyoto protocol," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 205-234, March.
    6. Demailly, Damien & Quirion, Philippe, 2008. "European Emission Trading Scheme and competitiveness: A case study on the iron and steel industry," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 2009-2027, July.
    7. Meredith L. Fowlie, 2009. "Incomplete Environmental Regulation, Imperfect Competition, and Emissions Leakage," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 72-112, August.
    8. Bushnell, James & Wolfram, Catherine, 2008. "Electricity Markets," Staff General Research Papers Archive 31547, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    9. Kim, Yeonbae & Worrell, Ernst, 2002. "International comparison of CO2 emission trends in the iron and steel industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(10), pages 827-838, August.
    10. Richard A. Lord & W. Ken Farr, 2003. "Collusion and Financial Leverage: An Analysis of the Integrated Mill Steel Industry," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 32(1), Spring.
    11. James A. Brander & Anming Zhang, 1990. "Market Conduct in the Airline Industry: An Empirical Investigation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(4), pages 567-583, Winter.
    12. Mark Bagnoli & Ted Bergstrom, 2005. "Log-concave probability and its applications," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 26(2), pages 445-469, August.
    13. Ritz, Robert A., 2008. "Strategic incentives for market share," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 586-597, March.
    14. Hoel, Michael, 1991. "Global environmental problems: The effects of unilateral actions taken by one country," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 55-70, January.
    15. Hepburn, Cameron J. & Quah, John K.-H. & Ritz, Robert A., 2013. "Emissions trading with profit-neutral permit allocations," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 85-99.
    16. Babiker, Mustafa H., 2005. "Climate change policy, market structure, and carbon leakage," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 421-445, March.
    17. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    18. Robert W. Hahn, 1984. "Market Power and Transferable Property Rights," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 99(4), pages 753-765.
    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. John Feddersen, 2012. "Why we can't confirm the pollution haven hypothesis: A model of carbon leakage with agglomeration," Economics Series Working Papers 613, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. repec:oup:apecpp:v:39:y:2017:i:2:p:242-258. is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Benjamin Jones & Michael Keen & Jon Strand, 2013. "Fiscal implications of climate change," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(1), pages 29-70, February.
    4. Sheldon, Ian & McCorriston, Steve, 2014. "Climate Policy and Border Measures: The Case of the US Aluminum Industry," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 169544, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Gabriela Michalek & Reimund Schwarze, 2015. "Carbon leakage: pollution, trade or politics?," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 17(6), pages 1471-1492, December.
    6. Ian Sheldon & Steve McCorriston, 2012. "Climate policy and border tax adjustments: Might industrial organization matter?," EconoQuantum, Revista de Economia y Negocios, Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Economico Administrativas, Departamento de Metodos Cuantitativos y Maestria en Economia., vol. 9(2), pages 7-28, Julio-Dic.
    7. Dieter Helm & Cameron Hepburn & Giovanni Ruta, 2012. "Trade, climate change, and the political game theory of border carbon adjustments," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 368-394, SUMMER.
    8. Morihiro Yomogida & Nori Tarui, 2013. "Emission Taxes and Border Tax Adjustments for Oligopolistic Industries," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(5), pages 644-673, December.
    9. Robert w. Hahn & Robert A. Ritz, 2013. "Does the social Cost of Carbon Matter?: An Assessment of U.S. Policy," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1346, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    10. Robert Hahn & Robert Ritz, 2014. "Optimal Altruism in Public Good Provision," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1403, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    11. Svetlana Batrakova, 2012. "Does industry concentration matter for pollution haven effects?," GRI Working Papers 90, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Abatement; Cap-and-trade; Carbon tax; Cost pass-through; Emissions trading; Free allocation; Market structure;

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    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:oxf:wpaper:461. 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: (Anne Pouliquen). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.html .

    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.