The Threat of Offshoring on the Environmental Regulation

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze how the threat of offshoring can lead policymakers to adopt more lenient emissions tax policies. This study focuses on analyzing the relationship between the stringency of environmental policies and firms’ strategic offshoring decisions when a government is concerned about the negative effects of increased offshoring such as domestic job losses. The analysis is based on an archetypal proximity concentration framework that has been enhanced by considering environmental regulations and abatement technology. The results imply that the threat of offshoring is more likely to impact emissions tax rates when firms experience higher productivity, or when offshoring leads to a significant level of domestic unemployment. That is, in these cases, the threat of offshoring is more likely to make the government lower emissions tax rates more than the optimal tax rate. Although the direct impact of offshoring on environmental policies is studied in many related works, the indirect impact of offshoring-that is, the threat of offshoring- on environmental policies has been seldom studied.