环境规制与国际贸易【外文翻译】.doc

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1、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 Abstract ：In this paper, we investigat

2、e 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 of the firms operating under command a

3、nd 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 the environmental authorities in Canada

4、 are seriously considering following the United States in instituting a trade able emission permits mechanism.1. IntroductionIn recent years, increased awareness of environmental issues has made pollution control, notably the control of emissions, an important topic in public policy discussions. A c

5、ommonly 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 substantial cost advantages over interna

6、tional 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). While earlier empirical research by Leona

7、rd (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 to the impact of environmental policy on

8、trade patterns. The link between trade and the environment is rooted in policy 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 might have on a countrys terms of trade co

9、uld 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 (1975) consider limitations in the exercise

10、 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 environmental regulation as the only feasible policy

11、 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 presence of transboundary pollution within a

12、n 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 globally efficient. Finally, Copeland (1994)

13、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 policies in order to avoid exacerbating distortion

14、s 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 environmental policy on trade patterns. Our

15、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 by the following observations. First, the fa

16、ct 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 environmental standards tend not to be signi

17、ficantly 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 environmental consciousness pushes countries

18、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 complement to any tariff-reducing agreement. Thu

19、s, 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 specific regulatory regime. Even in a context of

20、 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 enough to outweigh any trade disadvantage ste

21、mming 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 disadvantage. Among the various regulatory instr

22、uments, 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 regulator has full information, is well established in

23、 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 representative of the incentive based instrum

24、ents. 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 simulta-neous use of different types of regulation

25、 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 interested in finding whether the adoption of a

26、ny 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 firms under a CAC and a TEP regulation, respecti

27、vely; 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. ConclusionsWe investigate how a countrys choi

28、ce 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 operating under a CAC system. This is due to th

29、e 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. For large differences between the two firms aba

30、tement 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 environmental standards but also in sim

31、ilar regulatory regimes. The fact that environmental authorities in Canada are seriously considering following the United States in instituting environmental regulations through tradeable emission permits systems is consistent with the above result. The advantage of TEP regulations must be qualified

32、 for the competitive emission permit market assumption. Hanh (1984) has shown that in autarky, when the industry is competitive, a non-competitive permit market result in efficiency losses, but remains more efficien than a CAC system. Further, Sartzetakis (1993) fias shown that a CAC regulation may

33、be welfare superior to a non-competitive permits market when the industry is also non-competitive. These results indicate that the advantage of a TEP system may be substantially reduced in the presence of imperfections in the permits market.Background：State EnvironmentalismAmong other things the Cle

34、an Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and related national environmental legislation were born out of the concern that the patchwork of diverse state environmental standards evolving in the early 1970s would wreak havoc on interstate commerce and create competitive disadvantages for states striving to im

35、prove environmental quality. National environmental legislation was expected to level the playing field.Although national environmental policies have certainly raised the minimum level of environmental standards, three decades later very important differences in state environmental policies remain,

36、as anyone who works in business or industry can attest. Federal laws notwithstanding, state regulations governing hazardous waste disposal, wetlands filling, air and water pollution, and wildlife protection vary considerably between Louisiana and Massachusetts, Mississippi and New Jersey, and Idaho

37、and California.Some of these differences can be explained in terms of “need.” The more heavily industrialized and urbanized states have more serious environmental problems and hence require more stringent controls. Other differences can be attributed to variations in state political cultures. Sagebr

38、ush states, for example, tend to reflect the “leave people be” attitude of their residents.Regardless of what may explain these differences tabulating and comparing the characteristics of environmental policies among the states produces an interesting snapshot of the relative degree of “environmenta

39、lism” among the states. TABLE 1 lists the states in order, starting with those with the weakest environmental policies and moving down to the strongest, for 1982 and 1990. A detailed description of the precise method for deriving the scores underlying these listings is not important for our purposes

40、. In essence each state was scored on a set of roughly twenty environmental policy indicators, for example: wetlands policy, hazardous waste disposal policy, and non-point source pollution policy. The scores across each of the policy areas were then summed. Since the 1982 and 1990 lists were scaled

41、differently by their respective creators the scores for each period I standardized them (subtracting the mean for each respective series and dividing by the standard deviation) in order to allow meaningful comparisons. Consequently, a unit change in environmental score represents an approximate jump

42、 from the state ranked tenth (going weak to strong environmental policies) to the average state (i.e, the state ranked twenty-five). Another unit jump in environmental score would land on the state ranked about fortieth. Therefore a two unit difference on the environmental scale separates the ten st

43、ates with the weakest environmental policies from the ten states with the strongest policies. What is important is that the listings are intuitive: the states that most of us would guess as having the most stringent environmental regulations appear near the bottom of the list. Those that we would im

44、agine to have less rigorous standards are found near the top. This is essential for the analysis to be credible. Environmentalists, politicians, business and industry must feel comfortable that the correct comparisons are being made. If, for example, New Jersey were scored as have weak environmental

45、 policies it would simple (and proper) to dismiss the analysis.译 文：环境规制与国际贸易摘要：从本文中，我们得知一个国家的环境政策工具会影响该国公司的国际竞争力。我们使用古诺纳什均衡分析表明，在市场调节下公司通过分享排放许可能够减少温室气体排放总量，这归功于公司的优秀的经营和指导。我们的研究还表明在自由贸易状况下，不仅会产生相类似的环境标准，而且还会有类似的监督管理体制变化。而在加拿大的环保部门正在考虑紧跟美国的脚步而提起一项贸易排放许可机制的行为就不足为奇了。一、说明近年来，随着民众环境保护意识的加强，污染控制问题，特别是控制排

46、放的问题，已成为一个公共政策讨论的重要课题。一个大家普遍对排放控制这一有好处的政策提出的不同看法就是不得损害国内产业在国际市场上的竞争力。特别是对，在国家环保标准较低的国家运行与利用巨大的成本优势在国家环保标准更高的国家的运行的公司而言。甚至已经有些学者表示，有些国家可能成为“污染天堂”以牺牲环境为代价来吸引那些低环境标准的企业，比如，Markusen 等（1993）。但是早在Leonard(1988)和Tobey(1989,1990)的实证研究就认为环境标准上的差异其实并没有显著的影响贸易的格局；而最近Lucas等(1992)的研究表明，本文所提出的环境规制对于国际贸易的影响可能是起关键作用

47、的。 一些实际应用型的文献一直致力于寻找环境政策影响贸易模式之间的关系，贸易和环境关系主要取决于政策，这也是当局的最优预防污染方法。在缺乏相关的限制而使用环境和贸易的政策，任何的一个影响都有可能使某个国家的贸易条件有选择性的抵消税收。国际协议以及国内游说组织的作用，也在事实上成为了限制贸易/环保政策关系的工具。Baumol 和Oates(1988)还有Markusen(1975)考虑在行使环境政策或者是检查必要关税后所产生的环境问题。Krutilla（1991）和Markusen(1975)则认为在国际贸易协议中限制使用关税以进行环境监管的条例中，唯一可行的措施就是来自外国。在考虑这些所有情况

48、的条件下，发现这些关税或者是绿色税收可能会高于或比最高的水平略低。Kennedy(1994)也认为环境政策在一个在不完全竞争的全球环境下比调查跨国界污染更能够评测也更适合政府的支出水平，它决定于纳什均衡曲线，调查表明了，污染税在国与国之间的相互作用，平衡税款对于全球环境多是有效的。最后，Copelan(1994)承认使用限制于环境和贸易政策这些条件工具对于政策的逐渐改革是一种实质上的进步。他的作用强调的是协调贸易与污染政策，以避免进一步打破政策改革可能更加容易分配污染排放配额，但明显不是税收制度起的作用。他也发现，国际因素的流动性其实主要得益于污染政策的改革。在本文中，我们主要处理的是环境规制

49、对于各国贸易政策模式的影响。我们的工作与上述文件是不尽相同的，我们并不专注于环保的水平而是重点在环保的要求上，以及对一个国家的国际竞争力还有对其监管体制的类型影响。这些特别关注主要来源于以下的观察。首先，这一事实，有些国家已经批准了“以激励为基础的”政策监管工具也就是说税收与排放许可应具有可交易性显然别人也是在这个方向上进行相关工作的，以期能指挥与控制收益水平大小。第二，环保标准发展中国家往往与发达国家并不是明显不同的，看Cropper和Oates(1992)，由于类似的环境偏好保护或国际协议就形成了标准的相似性。关于后者，有人说是因为环境保护意识的增强与国家更加严格的规定，自由贸易协定将不再是可以做到忽视环境问题的程度了，需要对宽松的环境标准加强管制以代替国际协议中合同仲裁法规。因此，在当前趋势下，有些国家在面对严格的污染标准时有可能出现贸易自由化的副作用。不过，没有明显的理由去评价国际协议为什么应当加强参与国的任何特定监管制度