Environmental policy uncertainty, policy coordination and relocation decisions

We analyse the relocation decision of a firm who is producing in one country (home country) but has the opportunity to relocate. The firm is faced with uncertain environmental policy formation both at home as well as in the foreign country. We allow for international environmental policy coordination and for environmental policy risks to be correlated with economy-wide risk. We show that the impact of uncertainty on the relocation decision depends on the absolute level of uncertainty. However, this relationship is substantially affected by the existence of policy coordination and the correlation between environmental policy uncertainty and economy-wide risks. In the case of coordinated environmental policies for instance, an Ushaped relation between uncertainty and relocation emerges.