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1、环境规制与国际贸易外文翻译 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, w
2、e investigate how a countrys choice of environmental policy instrument affects the international competitiveness of its firmsWe 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
3、 command and control due to better allocation of total abatement among the firms in the countryOur work suggests that free trade situations should not only result in similar environmenta standards but also in similar regulatory regimesIt may come as no surprise that the environmental authorities in
4、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 topic in public policy discussio
5、nsA 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 substantial cost advantages over in
6、ternational competitors operating in more environmentally conscious countriesConcern has even been expressed that some countries could become pollution havens by attracting industries through low environmental standards; see for example, Markusen et al. 1993While earlier empirical research by Leonar
7、d 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 trade
8、patterns. The link between trade and the environment is rooted in policy rigidities that prevent authorities from achieving first best optimalityIn 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 could easi
9、ly be offset by the appropriate choice of tariffsInternational agreements as well as the action of domestic lobbying groups may in fact limit the applicability of trade and/or environmental policy instrumentsBaumol and Oates 1988 and Markusen 1975 consider limitations in the exercise of environmenta
10、l 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 towards rent extrac
11、tion from foreignersIn 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 an imperfectly competiti
12、ve 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 recognizes the possibilit
13、y of restrictions on the use of both environmental and trade policy instruments and investigates conditions for gradual policy reforms to be welfare improvingHis work emphasizes the need for coordinated trade and pollution policies in order to avoid exacerbating distortions and shows that small poli
14、cy 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 patternsOur work differs from the aforemen
15、tioned 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 fact that some countries have al
16、ready 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 regimesSecond, that environmental standards tend not to be significantly different among develop
17、ed countries; see Cropper and Oates 1992The 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 towards more stringent regulation, f
18、ree-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. Thus, a certain convergence of pollutio
19、n 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 differing environmental standards, t
20、he 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 stemming from a more stringent environme
21、ntal regulationThus, 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 instruments, Pigouvian taxes, tradeable emiss
22、ion 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 the literature. While Pigouvian taxes are u
23、sed mainly in Europe, there is an increasing interest in North America in the use of tradeable permits as an alternative to the widespread CAC regulationIn the present paper, we employ emission permits as the representative of the incentive based instrumentsA number of studies have tried to evaluate
24、 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 in an international trade context In this paper, we c
25、onsider two countries imposing the same environmental standards through different regulatory regimes and examine the potential effects of this asymmetry on trade patternsMore specifically, we are interested in finding whether the adoption of any specific regime might help a countrys industry to incr
26、ease 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, respectively; and section 5 analyses the free-trade equilibrium un
27、der the simultaneous presence of both regulatory regimesSection 6 contains the concluding remarks. Most proofs have been abbreviated with more details provided in the corresponding appendices.6. Conclusions We investigate how a countrys choice of environmental policy instrument affects the internati
28、onal competitiveness of firms in that countryWe 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 the fact that a TEP system better allocates total abatement amo
29、ng the firms in the countryThe advantage of a TEP system becomes more pronounced as the diversity of abatement technologies within the country that implements a CAC regulation is increasedFor large differences between the two firms abatement costs, the enactment of environmental regulation may incre
30、ase the output of the country that implements a TEP regulation relative to the pre-regulation situationOur work suggests, therefore, that free trade situations should not only result in similar environmental standards but also in similar regulatory regimesThe fact that environmental authorities in C
31、anada 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 for the competitive emission permit market assumption. Hanh 1984 has
32、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 be welfare superior to a non-competitive permits market when the industry
33、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 Environmentalism Among other things the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and related national environmental legis
34、lation 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 improve environmental quality. National environmental legislation was expec
35、ted 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, as anyone who works in business or industry can attest. Federal laws not
36、withstanding, 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 and California. Some of these differences can be explained in terms of “
37、need.” The more heavily industrialized and urbanized states have more serious environmental problems and hence require more stringent controlsOther differences can be attributed to variations in state political culturesSagebrush states, for example, tend to reflect the “leave people be” attitude of
38、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 “environmentalism” among the states. TABLE 1 lists the states in order, starting with t
39、hose 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. In essence each state was scored on a set of roughly twenty environmenta
40、l policy indicators, for example: wetlands policy, hazardous waste disposal policy, and non-point source pollution policyThe scores across each of the policy areas were then summed. Since the 1982 and 1990 lists were scaled differently by their respective creators the scores for each period I standa
41、rdized 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 from the state ranked tenth going weak to strong environmental policies to th
42、e average state i.e, the state ranked twenty-five. Another unit jump in environmental score would land on the state ranked about fortiethTherefore a two unit difference on the environmental scale separates the ten states with the weakest environmental policies from the ten states with the strongest
43、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 listThose that we would imagine to have less rigorous standards are found near the topThis is essential for the a
44、nalysis to be credible. Environmentalists, politicians, business and industry must feel comfortable that the correct comparisons are being madeIf, for example, New Jersey were scored as have weak environmental 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
45、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
46、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Leonard1988和Tobey1989,1990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
47、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Oates1988还有Markusen1975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Markusen1975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。 Kennedy1994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
48、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,Copelan1994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
49、,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Oates1992,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。 甚至在同一个国家也有不同的环保要求,对不同的政权影响国际竞争力是不可忽视的影响。如上面所说,因为减少温室气体排放技术的国与国,地区与地区之间的巨大差异,更有效的监管体制所带来的优势会给贸易带来更大的收益。因此,更加有效的国家监管制度可以使你占有更多国家市场份额或者至少使没有一家公司