Unemployment and Environmental Regulation in General Equilibrium
Resources for the Future Discussion Paper 15-11
37 Pages Posted: 3 Jun 2016
There are 2 versions of this paper
Unemployment and Environmental Regulation in General Equilibrium
Unemployment and Environmental Regulation in General Equilibrium
Date Written: May 12, 2016
Abstract
This paper analyzes the effects of environmental policy on employment (and unemployment) using a new general-equilibrium two-sector search model. We find that imposing a pollution tax causes substantial reductions in employment in the regulated (polluting) industry, but this is offset by increased employment in the unregulated (nonpolluting) sector. Thus the policy causes a substantial shift in employment between industries, but the net effect on overall employment (and unemployment) is small, even in the short run. An environmental performance standard causes a substantially smaller sectoral shift in employment than the emissions tax, with roughly similar net effects. The effects on the unregulated industry suggest that empirical studies of environmental regulation that focus only on regulated firms can be misleading (and those that use nonregulated firms as controls for regulated firms will be even more misleading). The paper’s results also suggest that overall effects on employment are not a major issue for environmental policy, and that policymakers who want to minimize sectoral shifts in employment might prefer performance standards over environmental taxes.
Keywords: Unemployment, Environmental Regulation, Emissions Pricing, Climate, Environmental Tax, Intensity Standard
JEL Classification: Q58, Q52, H23, E23, J64
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation