Environmental misallocation in the copper industry

Juan Correa, Marcos Gomez, Andrés Luengo and Francisco Parro

Resources Policy, 2021, vol. 71, issue C

Abstract: We use mine-level data from the international copper industry to quantify environmental misallocation. We define this concept as the ratio between the observed carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the industry and the level reached by a social planner that allocates the current aggregate output across mines so as to minimize emissions, conditional on some well-defined extraction rules. We find that CO2 emissions from the world copper industry are reduced by 47% under the planner's allocation. We also provide evidence suggesting that a cleaner environment is not necessarily tied to lower levels of productive efficiency.

Keywords: Copper industry; Pollution; Misallocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q30 Q50 Q52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:71:y:2021:i:c:s0301420721000209

DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2021.102003

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