Abstract
We examine international cooperation on technological development as an alternative to international cooperation on emission reductions. We show that without any R&D cooperation, R&D in each country should be increased beyond the non-cooperative level if (i) the technology level in one country is positively affected by R&D in other countries, (ii) the domestic carbon tax is lower than the Pigovian level, or (iii) the domestic carbon tax is set directly through an international tax agreement. We also show that a second-best technology agreement has higher R&D, higher emissions, or both compared with the first-best-outcome. The second-best subsidy always exceeds the subsidy under no international R&D cooperation. Further, when the price of carbon is the same in the second-best technology agreement and in the case without R&D cooperation, welfare is highest, R&D is highest and emissions are lowest in the second-best R&D agreement.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Golombek, R., Hoel, M. International Cooperation on Climate-friendly Technologies. Environ Resource Econ 49, 473–490 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-010-9442-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-010-9442-x