Endogenous Lobby Formation and Endogenous Environmental Protection with Unilateral Tariff Reduction

This paper studies how one country’s decision to liberalize trade affects the political economic structure that determines environmental policy in another country. By constructing a political economy model in which the formation of lobby groups and environmental policy are endogenously determined, we show that unilateral tariff reductions by a large country importing a polluting good will generate a lobby group with a relatively lower cost of organization in a small country exporting that good. A formulated lobby demands an inefficient environmental policy, and hence, the small country’s environmental regulations become less efficient. Then, we show that when a lobby already exists, unilateral tariff reductions result in the formation of a rival lobby and consequently make the small country’s environmental policy more efficient.