Trade liberalization in environmental goods

Rui Wan, Minoru Nakada and Yasuhiro Takarada

Resource and Energy Economics, 2018, vol. 51, issue C, 44-66

Abstract: Trade negotiations have started to pay attention to liberalization in environmental goods (EGs), whose production may require dirty intermediate goods. We construct a two-country trade model to explore the effects of trade liberalization in EGs on the local pollution, the global environment and welfare in the presence of such an environmental conundrum. We find that countries do not necessarily benefit from trade liberalization in EGs in the absence of an environmental policy. With the assistance of an upstream pollution tax, trade liberalization in EGs improves each country's welfare. This result holds independent of whether the upstream market is competitive or not, or whether we have upstream trade across countries. For asymmetric countries, trade liberalization in EGs improves the world welfare and the welfare for the country if it has a smaller demand for EGs; or experiences less damage from the production of dirty inputs; or values environment improvement more.

Keywords: Environmental goods; Vertical market; Import tariff; Pollution tax (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F18 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:resene:v:51:y:2018:i:c:p:44-66

DOI: 10.1016/j.reseneeco.2017.11.001

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