A Dynamic Approach to the Environmental Effects of Trade Liberalization

In this paper, we develop a two-country world differential game model with a polluting firm in each country where there is transportation cost to investigate the equilibrium of the game between firms when they decide to trade or not and to see under which conditions social welfare coincides with the market equilibrium. We find out that in the static game bilateral trade is always the equilibrium for any acceptable transportation cost while in the dynamic game social planner can prevent the inefficient outcome by imposing and determining the proper amount of Pigouvian taxation.