International Spillovers and Carbon Pricing Policies

Geoffroy Dolphin and Michael Pollitt

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Abstract: Globally coordinated climate action has resulted in sub-optimal emissions reductions and unilateral (second-best) climate policies have so far provided the bulk of emissions reductions. This paper argues that the development of new unilateral carbon pricing policies was fostered by international signalling and technological spillover effects. The strength of both effects hinges, for each jurisdiction, on trade relations with other CO2-abating jurisdictions. We provide a stylised theoretical discussion in support of our proposition and investigate it using data on a panel of 121national jurisdictions over the period 1990-2014. Results show a strong positive association between import-weighted exposure to CO2-pricing partners and domestic environmental policy. The analysis also supports the technological spillover channel: trade-weighted installed capacity of wind and solar energy seems to prompt implementation of and more stringent carbon pricing policies.

Keywords: international spillovers; trade; carbon pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F18 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-reg
Note: mgp20
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/pub ... pe-pdfs/cwpe1803.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: International spillovers and carbon pricing Policies (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:1803

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake Dyer ().