Carbon Offshoring: Evidence from French Manufacturing Companies - Sciences Po Access content directly
Preprints, Working Papers, ... Year :

Carbon Offshoring: Evidence from French Manufacturing Companies

Abstract

Concerns about carbon offshoring, namely the relocation of dirty tasks abroad, undermine the efficiency of domestic carbon mitigation policies and might prevent governments from adopting more ambitious climate policies. This paper is the first to analyse the extent and determinants of carbon offshoring at the firm level. We combine information on carbon emissions, imports, imported emissions and environmental policy stringency based on a unique dataset of 5,000 French manufacturing firms observed from 1997 to 2014. We estimate the impact of imported emissions on firm’s domestic emissions and emission intensity using a shift-share instrumental variable strategy. We do not find compelling evidence of an impact of carbon offshoring on total emissions, but show that emission efficiency improves in companies offshoring emissions abroad, suggesting that offshored emissions are compensated by an increase in production scale. The effect is economically meaningful with a 10% increase in carbon offshoring causing a 4% decline in emission intensity. However, this effect is twice as small as that of domestic energy prices and, importantly, does not appear to be driven by a pollution haven motive.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
2020-dussaux-carbon-offshoring.pdf (1.29 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origin : Publisher files allowed on an open archive

Dates and versions

hal-03403069 , version 1 (26-10-2021)

Identifiers

Cite

Damien Dussaux, Francesco Vona, Antoine Dechezleprêtre. Carbon Offshoring: Evidence from French Manufacturing Companies: Evidence from French Manufacturing Companies. 2020. ⟨hal-03403069⟩
102 View
270 Download

Share

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More