Impacts of emission reduction policies in a multi-regional multi-sectoral small open economy with endogenous growth

The burden sharing of pollution abatement costs raises the issue of how to share the costs between entities (country, region or industry) and how the pollution permits should be distributed between the parties involved. This paper explores this issue in the framework of a dynamic endogenous growth 2 sectors - 2 regions - 2 inputs Heckscher-Ohlin model of a small open multi-regional economy with an international tradable permits market. Give an “emission-based grand-fathering” sharing rule, capital accumulation is more negatively affected by the environmental policy in the energy intensive sector. We show that such a property does not necessarily hold with a “production-based grand-fathering” sharing rule. We also show that the impact on capital is likely to translate into the sectoral added value level after some time, specially if the economy is submitted to an increasingly constraining environmental policy driving up the ratio price of permits to price of energy. Finally, we show that the impact of environmental policy at the regional level depends crucially on the specialization of the region along the baseline.