The Competitiveness Impacts of Climate Change Mitigation Policies

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
Year: 2015
Volume: 2
Issue: 4
Pages: 565 - 595

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

The pollution haven hypothesis suggests that unilateral domestic climate change mitigation policy would impose significant economic costs on carbon-intensive industries, resulting in declining output and increasing net imports. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, we undertake a two-step empirical analysis. First, we estimate how production and net imports change in response to energy prices using a 35-year panel of approximately 450 US manufacturing industries. Second, we use these estimated relationships to simulate the impacts of changes in energy prices resulting from a $15 per ton carbon price. We find that energy-intensive manufacturing industries are more likely to experience decreases in production and increases in net imports than less-intensive industries. Our best estimate is that competitiveness effects--measured by the increase in net imports--are as large as 0.8% for the most energy-intensive industries and represent no more than about one-sixth of the estimated decrease in production.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/683305
Journal Field
Environment
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-24