Green Technology Transfers and Border Tax Adjustments

Abstract

We develop a two-country general equilibrium model of foreign technology transfers tied to environmental clean-up and border tax adjustments in the presence of transboundary pollution. Pollution is generated in the aid recipient as a by-product in the production of a ‘dirty’ good, which it consumes, as well as exports to the donor country. In contrast to the literature which typically treats aid as a monetary transfer, we assume that foreign aid consists of a transfer of environmental technology that lowers the cost of public clean-up. We also consider a border tax adjustment (BTA) as a secondary policy instrument used in order to internalize the residual transboundary externality. We study the environmental and welfare outcomes of the technology transfer and the BTA as well as the interaction between the two policy instruments. We derive conditions under which the additional presence of a BTA may lead to a lower transfer and less public pollution abatement in the recipient, with counter-productive consequences for both the environment and welfare. Contrary to intuition, we find that the green technology transfer and the border tax adjustment are not always complements.