Does Commuting Change the Ranking of Environmental Instruments?

Abstract

This paper studies the income effects of environmental policy in jurisdictions with a common labor market and a heterogeneous population (workers and polluters). A jurisdiction unilaterally improves its local environmental quality, using a subsidy, an environmental tax or command-and-control. In a closed economy, workers and polluters have some kind of a "natural ranking" of instruments for a given environmental objective. We find that commuting across jurisdictions may upset this "natural ranking" of environmental instruments. Further, we see that this inter-jurisdictional commuting exports pollution and the costs of environmental policy, possibly causing strategic behavior.

Keywords: environmental instrument choice, commuting, interest groups

JEL Classification: Q52, R23