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AbstractTrade changes incentives to protect an open-access natural resource independently of its effect on the resource price. General equilibrium linkages cause resource policy to affect the price of privately owned assets regardless of whether they are used in the resource sector. In the closed economy, the asset market in our overlapping generations setting creates incentives for currently living agents to protect the natural resource. The interplay of the asset market and general equilibrium effects causes trade to reverse these incentives. Trade liberalization and the establishment of formal property rights are policy complements: the former makes the latter more important.

AbstractIn familiar models, a decrease in the friction facing mobile factors (e.g., lowering their adjustment costs) increases a coordination problem, leading to more circumstances where there are multiple equilibria. We show that a decrease in friction can decrease coordination problems when a production externality arises from a changing stock, e.g. of pollution or knowledge. In general, the relation between the amount of friction that mobile factors face and the likelihood of multiple equilibria is non-monotonic.

A two-sector OLG model illuminates previously unexamined intergenerationaleffects of a tax that protects an environmental stock. A traded asset capitalizes the economic returns to future tax-induced environmental improvements, benefiting the current asset owners, the old generation. Absent a transfer, the tax harms the young generation by decreasing their real wage. Future generations benefit fromthe tax-induced improvement in environmental stock. The principalintergenerational conflict arising from public policy is between generationsalive at the time society imposes the policy, not between generations alive at different times. A Pareto-improving policy can be implemented under various political economy settings.