Carbon leakage in production networks under asymmetric climate policies

Climate policies are typically designed at the regional level. This generates differences in implicit carbon prices across countries that can alter the structure of trade patterns and undermine the effectiveness of environmental regulations through carbon leakage. The paper examines the macroeconomi...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Grugni, Elisa|||0000-0002-0682-2203; Savin, Ivan|||0000-0002-9469-0510; Van den Bergh, Jeroen|||0000-0003-3415-3083
Format: Article
Publication date:2026
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repository:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:324068
Online Access:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/324068
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1016/j.jedc.2025.105241
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Agent-based modeling
Border carbon adjustment
Climate change
Global value chains
SDG 13 - Climate Action
Description
Summary:Climate policies are typically designed at the regional level. This generates differences in implicit carbon prices across countries that can alter the structure of trade patterns and undermine the effectiveness of environmental regulations through carbon leakage. The paper examines the macroeconomic consequences of asymmetric climate policies, focusing on how they affect the international structure of production. The purpose is twofold: assessing the impact of uncoordinated climate policies on the outsourcing of production and studying the effectiveness of a border carbon adjustment mechanism aimed at safeguarding countries' competitiveness. To this end, we develop and simulate a theoretical agent-based model in which supply chains are endogenously determined by downstream firms' sourcing strategies; such firms select a supplier of intermediate goods, whose production generates emissions and is subjected to environmental regulations. Focusing on bottom-up interactions among heterogeneous and boundedly rational agents, this approach provides novel insights into how environmental policies rewire firm linkages within global production networks, and how this reshaping affects overall carbon emissions.