[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cwl/cwldpp/1079.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Locational Competition and the Environment: Should Countries Harmonize Their Environmental Policies?

Author

Abstract
In debates about economic unification or trade liberalization, it is often asked whether harmonization should go beyond taxes and macroeconomic policies to include regulations, particularly environmental policy. This issue also arises when countries, states, and cities engage in competition for plants, jobs, or exports in what we might call "locational competition." This essay analyzes locational competition with particular reference to environmental policy. The conclusions are the following: First, economic efficiency requires harmonization of policies for global environmental issues; second, for local public goods or externalities, there is a strong presumptive case against harmonization; and finally that a competitive "race to the bottom" in environmental policies is inconsistent with countries' following their own economic self-interests.

Suggested Citation

  • William D. Nordhaus, 1994. "Locational Competition and the Environment: Should Countries Harmonize Their Environmental Policies?," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1079, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
  • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1079
    Note: CFP 920.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d10/d1079.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    2. Martin L. Weitzman, 1974. "Prices vs. Quantities," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 41(4), pages 477-491.
    3. Robert K. Kaufmann & Peter Pauly & Julie Sweitzer, 1993. "The Effects of NAFTA on the Environment," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 217-240.
    4. Paul Krugman, 1986. "Strategic Trade Policy and the New International Economics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262610450, April.
    5. Whalley, John, 1991. "The Interface between Environmental and Trade Policies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(405), pages 180-189, March.
    6. Cropper, Maureen L & Oates, Wallace E, 1992. "Environmental Economics: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 675-740, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Yiming & Zhang, Pei & Huang, Dake & Cai, Changda, 2014. "Convergence behavior of carbon dioxide emissions in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 75-80.
    2. Henry van Egteren & R. Smith, 2002. "Environmental Regulations Under Simple Negligence or Strict Liability," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 21(4), pages 367-394, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rauscher, Michael, 2001. "International trade, foreign investment, and the environment," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 29, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics.
    2. Nordström, Håkan & Vaughan, Scott, 1999. "Trade and the environment," WTO Special Studies, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division, volume 4, number 4.
    3. Fankhauser, Samuel & Hepburn, Cameron, 2010. "Designing carbon markets. Part I: Carbon markets in time," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4363-4370, August.
    4. Inés Macho-Stadler, 2008. "Environmental regulation: choice of instruments under imperfect compliance," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-21, March.
    5. Don Fullerton & Gilbert E. Metcalf, 2002. "Environmental Controls, Scarcity Rents, and Pre-existing Distortions," Chapters, in: Lawrence H. Goulder (ed.), Environmental Policy Making in Economies with Prior Tax Distortions, chapter 26, pages 504-522, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Ritter, Hendrik & Zimmermann, Karl, 2019. "Cap-and-Trade Policy vs. Carbon Taxation: Of Leakage and Linkage," EconStor Preprints 197796, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    7. Sam Fankhauser & Cameron Hepburn, 2009. "Carbon markets in space and time," GRI Working Papers 3, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    8. Marcel Boyer & Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1996. "Toward a Political Theory of Environmental Policy," CIRANO Working Papers 96s-07, CIRANO.
    9. Lawrence H. Goulder & Ian W.H. Parry & Roberton C. Williams III & Dallas Burtraw, 2002. "The Cost-Effectiveness of Alternative Instruments for Environmental Protection in a Second-Best Setting," Chapters, in: Lawrence H. Goulder (ed.), Environmental Policy Making in Economies with Prior Tax Distortions, chapter 27, pages 523-554, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Patrick Criqui, 2009. "Au coeur du futur régime climatique international : taxes ou quotas CO2 ?," Post-Print halshs-00436709, HAL.
    11. Dominique Finon, 2006. "The Social Efficiency Of Instruments For The Promotion Of Renewable Energies In The Liberalised Power Industry," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 77(3), pages 309-343, September.
    12. Daigee Shaw & Ming-Feng Hung, 2001. "Evolution and evaluation of air pollution control policy in Taiwan," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 4(3), pages 141-166, September.
    13. Requate, Till, 2005. "Environmental Policy under Imperfect Competition: A Survey," Economics Working Papers 2005-12, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    14. Letmathe, Peter & Wagner, Sandra, 2018. "“Messy” marginal costs: Internal pricing of environmental aspects on the firm level," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 41-52.
    15. Stavins, Robert, 2004. "Introduction to the Political Economy of Environmental Regulations," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-12, Resources for the Future.
    16. Gardner Brown, 2000. "Renewable Natural Resource Management and Use Without Markets," Working Papers 0025, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    17. Roger Fouquet, 2012. "Economics of Energy and Climate Change: Origins, Developments and Growth," Working Papers 2012-08, BC3.
    18. Kalsbach, Oliver & Rausch, Sebastian, 2024. "Pricing carbon in a multi-sector economy with social discounting," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    19. Philippe Menanteau & Dominique Finon & Marie-Laure Lamy, 2001. "Prix versus quantités : Les politiques environnementales d’incitation au développement des énergies renouvelables," Working Papers halshs-01321796, HAL.
    20. Segerson, Kathleen, 1994. "Environmental Policy And Risk," 1994 Quantifying Long Run Agricultural Risks and Evaluating Farmer Responses Risk, Technical Committee Meeting, March 24-26, 1994, Gulf Shores State Park, Alabama 271555, Regional Research Projects > S-232: Quantifying Long Run Agricultural Risks and Evaluating Farmer Responses to Risk.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1079. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Brittany Ladd (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cowleus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.