DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENTAL TAXES UNDER INTERNATIONAL DUOPOLY

Abstract

This paper studies a dynamic game of environmental taxes between two countries in the absence of explicit trade policies when both governments and firms act strategically. We demonstrate that the environmental tax in the steady-state equilibrium in a dynamic environmental tax game is lower than that in a static environmental one. Therefore, the dynamic behaviour of the governments results in an increase in the environmental damage. Further, as a result of international cooperation on environmental taxes between two countries in the beginning of policy competition, there is an increase in the optimal environmental tax. This implies that it is important to set cooperative environmental taxes in the beginning of policy competition because non-cooperative environmental taxes in the dynamic game result in the race-to-the-bottom, which does not lead to environmental improvement.