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Abstract
Unilateral emission reduction commitments raise concerns on international competitiveness and emission leakage that result in preferential regulatory treatment of domestic energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries. Our analysis illustrates the potential pitfalls of climate policy design which narrowly focuses on competitiveness concerns about energy-intensive and trade-exposed branches. The sector-specific gains of preferential regulation in favour of these branches must be traded off against the additional burden imposed on other industries and economy-wide excess costs to meet the unilateral emission reduction target. From the perspective of global cost-effectiveness, however, preferential emission pricing for domestic energy-intensive and trade-exposed sectors can reduce leakage and thereby lower overall cost of cutting global emissions as compared to uniform emission pricing.