The impact of capital trade and technological spillovers on climate policies

In this paper, we present an intertemporal optimization model that is designed to analyze climate policy scenarios within a globalized world which is characterized by the existence of technological spillovers. We consider a type of technological spillovers that is bound to bilateral capital trade. Importing foreign capital that increases the efficiency of energy use represents a mitigation option that extends the commonly modeled portfolio. The technical details of the model are presented in this paper. The model is solved numerically. First model applications highlight the differences between climate policy analyses which either take or do not take technological spillovers into account. In the final part, we apply the model to investigate first-mover advantages and commitment incentives in climate policy scenarios. The existence of both is supported by simulation results.