Searching for carbon leaks in multinational companies
File(s)Searching for Carbon Leaks.pdf (1.14 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Dechezleprêtre, Antoine
Gennaioli, Caterina
Martin, Ralf
Muûls, Mirabelle
Stoerk, Thomas
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Does a unilateral climate change policy cause companies to shift the location of production, thereby creating carbon leakage? In this paper, we analyze the effect of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on the geographic distribution of carbon emissions by multinational companies. The empirical evidence is based on unique data for the period 2007-2014 from the Carbon Disclosure Project, which tracks the emissions of multinational businesses by geographic region within each company. Because they already operate from multiple locations, multinational firms should be the most prone to carbon leakage. Our data includes the regional emissions of 1,122 companies, of which 261 are subject to EU ETS regulation. We find no evidence that the EU ETS has led to a displacement of carbon emissions from Europe toward the rest of the world, including to countries with lax climate policies and within energy-intensive companies. A large number of robustness checks confirm this finding. Overall, the paper suggests that modest differences in carbon prices between countries do not induce carbon leakage.
Date Issued
2021-12
Date Acceptance
2021-11-29
Citation
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2021, 112
ISSN
0095-0696
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
Volume
112
Copyright Statement
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Sponsor
The Leverhulme Trust
Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)
Commission of the European Communities
Identifier
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069621001406?via%3Dihub
Grant Number
ECF-2011-622
ES/J006742/1
308481
Subjects
Agricultural Economics & Policy
0502 Environmental Science and Management
1401 Economic Theory
1402 Applied Economics
Publication Status
Published online
Article Number
102601
Date Publish Online
2021-12-24