Timing of adoption of clean technologies, transboundary pollution and international trade

Mehdi Ben Jebli () and Slim Ben Youssef

No 2013-50, Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: The authors consider a symmetric model composed of two countries and a firm in each country. Firms produce the same good by means of a polluting technology which uses fossil energy. However, these firms can adopt a clean technology which uses a renewable energy having a lower unit cost. Surprisingly, opening markets to international competition increases the per-unit emission-tax and decreases the per-unit production subsidy. Interestingly, the socially optimal adoption date under a common market better internalizes transboundary pollution than that under autarky. It also better internalizes transboundary pollution compared with the optimal adoption dates for firms. In autarky (resp. a common market), firms adopt the clean technology earlier (resp. later) than what is socially optimal and, therefore, regulators can induce clean technology adoption at the socially optimal adoption date by giving firms postpone (resp. speed up) adoption subsidies. Opening markets to international trade, speeds up socially optimal adoption dates and delays optimal adoption dates for firms. Consequently, with market opening, speed up adoption subsidies are needed to reduce the global flow of pollution.

Keywords: regulation; adoption date; renewable energy; transboundary pollution; common (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 F18 H57 Q42 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-res
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2013-50
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/82649/1/768461871.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Timing of adoption of clean technologies, transboundary pollution and international trade (2012)
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:zbw:ifwedp:201350

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().