环境规制与国际贸易外文翻译

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1、 1 1914 单词， 11000 英文字符 ,3600 汉字 本科毕业论文外文翻译 外文题目： Environmental regulation and international trade 出 处： Journal of Regulatory Economics Volume 8, Number 1,61-72,DOI:10.1007/BF01066600 作 者： Eftichios Sophocles Sartzetakis and Christos Constantatos 原文： Environmental regulation and international trade A

2、bstract ： In this paper, we investigate how a countrys choice of environmental policy instrument affects the international competitiveness of its firms. We show that in a Cournot-Nash equilibrium, the total marke share of firms regulated through tradeable emission permits increases relative to that

3、of the firms operating under command and control due to better allocation of total abatement among the firms in the country. Our work suggests that free trade situations should not only result in similar environmenta standards but also in similar regulatory regimes. It may come as no surprise that t

4、he environmental authorities in Canada are seriously considering following the United States in instituting a trade able emission permits mechanism. 1. Introduction In recent years, increased awareness of environmental issues has made pollution control, notably the control of emissions, an important

5、 topic in public policy discussions. A commonly raised objection against emissions control is that this may impair the competitiveness of the domestic industry in international markets. In particular, it has been argued that firms operating in countries with low environmental standards will acquire

6、substantial cost advantages over international competitors operating in more environmentally conscious countries. Concern has even been expressed that some countries could become pollution havens by attracting industries through low environmental standards； see for example, Markusen et al. (1993). W

7、hile earlier empirical research by Leonard (1988) and Tobey (1989； 1990) suggested that differences in environmental standards did not have significant impact on trade patterns, more recent work by Lucas et al. (1992) showed that this impact may be important. Substantial literature has been devoted

8、to the impact of environmental policy on trade patterns. The link between trade and the environment is rooted in policy 2 rigidities that prevent authorities from achieving first best optimality. In the absence of any restrictions on the use of environmental and trade policies, any impact the former

9、 might have on a countrys terms of trade could easily be offset by the appropriate choice of tariffs. International agreements as well as the action of domestic lobbying groups may in fact limit the applicability of trade and/or environmental policy instruments. Baumol and Oates (1988) and Markusen

10、(1975) consider limitations in the exercise of environmental policy and examine modifications to the first-best tariffs necessary to account for environmental issues. Krutilla (1991) and Markusen (1975) consider cases in which international trade agreements limit the use of tariffs leaving environme

11、ntal regulation as the only feasible policy towards rent extraction from foreigners. In all cases, it is found that the second-best tariff or environmental tax may be higher or smaller compared to its first-best level. Kennedy (1994) also considers environmental policy as the only instrument in the

12、presence of transboundary pollution within an imperfectly competitive global environment. Rather than looking at the optimal tax level, he determines the Nash equilibrium pollution taxes and shows that strategic interaction between countries results to equilibrium taxes that are lower than what is g

13、lobally efficient. Finally, Copeland (1994) recognizes the possibility of restrictions on the use of both environmental and trade policy instruments and investigates conditions for gradual policy reforms to be welfare improving. His work emphasizes the need for coordinated trade and pollution polici

14、es in order to avoid exacerbating distortions and shows that small policy reforms may be more easily implemented under a quota rather than a tax regime. He also finds that international factor mobility increases the benefits from reforming pollution policy. In this paper, we deal with the impact of

15、environmental policy on trade patterns. Our work differs from the aforementioned papers in that, instead of focusing on the level of environmental standards, we concentrate on the impact of the type of regulatory regime on a countrys international competitiveness. This particular focus is motivated

16、by the following observations. First, the fact that some countries have already adopted incentive based regulatory policy instruments-namely taxes and tradeable emissions permits-while others are more hesitant to move in this direction and continue to apply command and control regimes. Second, that

17、environmental standards tend not to be significantly different among developed countries； see Cropper and Oates (1992). The similarity of standards is merely due to similar preferences for environmental protection and/or international agreements. Concerning the latter, one can argue that as rising e

18、nvironmental consciousness pushes countries towards more stringent regulation, free-trade agreements will no longer be able to neglect environmental issues； the need to prevent the use of lax environmental standards as a substitute for trade policy will make international agreements a necessary comp

19、lement to any tariff-reducing agreement. Thus, a certain convergence of pollution standards among countries may arise as a side effect of the current trend towards trade liberalization. There is, however, no apparent reason why international agreements should impose on participant countries any spec

20、ific regulatory regime. 3 Even in a context of differing environmental standards, the impact of differing regimes on international competitiveness should not be neglected. As we show, for large differences in abatement technology, a more efficient regulatory regime may yield an advantage substantial

21、 enough to outweigh any trade disadvantage stemming from a more stringent environmental regulation. Thus, the country with the more efficient regulatory regime can either increase its international market share or afford a better environmental protection without putting its firms in a competitive di

22、sadvantage. Among the various regulatory instruments, Pigouvian taxes, tradeable emission permits (TEP), and command and control (CAC) are the most commonly used. The equivalence of emission taxes and permits, when there are no transaction costs or imperfections in the permit market and the regulato

23、r has full information, is well established in the literature. While Pigouvian taxes are used mainly in Europe, there is an increasing interest in North America in the use of tradeable permits as an alternative to the widespread CAC regulation. In the present paper, we employ emission permits as the

24、 representative of the incentive based instruments. A number of studies have tried to evaluate the welfare merits of each system by performing comparative statics in a closed economy； see, for example, Malueg (1990), Copeland (1990), and Sartzetakis (1993). However, no work has yet examined the simu

25、lta-neous use of different types of regulation in an international trade context. In this paper, we consider two countries imposing the same environmental standards through different regulatory regimes and examine the potential effects of this asymmetry on trade patterns. More specifically, we are i

26、nterested in finding whether the adoption of any specific regime might help a countrys industry to increase its share in international markets. The paper is organized as follows: section 2 describes the main model in the absence of regulation； sections 3 and 4 derive the reaction functions of the fi

27、rms under a CAC and a TEP regulation, respectively； and section 5 analyses the free-trade equilibrium under the simultaneous presence of both regulatory regimes. Section 6 contains the concluding remarks. Most proofs have been abbreviated with more details provided in the corresponding appendices. 6

28、. Conclusions We investigate how a countrys choice of environmental policy instrument affects the international competitiveness of firms in that country. We show that in a Cournot-Nash equilibrium, the total market share of firms regulated through a TEP system increases relative to that of the firms

29、 operating under a CAC system. This is due to the fact that a TEP system better allocates total abatement among the firms in the country. The advantage of a TEP system becomes more pronounced as the diversity of abatement technologies within the country that implements a CAC regulation is increased.

30、 For large differences between the two firms abatement costs, the enactment of environmental regulation may increase the output of the country that implements a TEP regulation relative to the pre-regulation situation. Our work suggests, therefore, that free trade situations should not only result in similar