The Environmental Implications of Russia's Accession to the World Trade Organization

Bohringer, Christoph ; Rutherford, Thomas F. ; Tarr, David G. ; Turdyeva, Natalia

World Bank Group, Washington, DC

关键词: ABATEMENT;    ABATEMENT POLICIES;    ADVERSE IMPACT;    AGGREGATE EMISSIONS;    AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6957
RP-ID  :  WPS6957

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This report investigates theenvironmental impacts of Russia's accession to theWorld Trade Organization. A 10-region, 30-sector model ofthe Russian economy is developed. The model is innovativeand more accurate empirically in that it contains foreigndirect investment, imperfectly competitive sectors, andendogenous productivity effects triggered by World TradeOrganization accession along with environmental emissionsdata in Russia for seven pollutants that are tracked for all30 sectors in each of the 10 regions. The decompositionanalysis shows that despite the fact that World TradeOrganization accession allows Russia to import bettertechnologies and reduce pollution from the "techniqueeffect," on balance World Trade Organization accessionalone will increase environmental pollution in Russiathrough a shift toward dirty industries (the"composition effect") and the expansion of outputwith its associated increase in pollution ("scaleeffect"). The paper assesses the costs of three typesof environmental regulations to reduce carbon dioxideemissions by 20 percent. The paper simultaneously implementsa central case scenario with each of the carbon dioxideemission reduction policy initiatives. The analysis findsthat the welfare gains of World Trade Organization accessionare large enough to pay for the costs of any of the threeenvironmental abatement policies, while leaving a netwelfare gain. But the political economy implications arethat the non-market-based policies are more costly and thecommand and control policy, which is not well targeted, isvery costly. Based on a constant returns to scale model, theestimated welfare gains are insufficient to finance thecosts of environmental regulation.