Free trade agreements with environmental provisions between asymmetric countries: transfer of clean technology and enforcement

This paper investigates the effects of a free trade agreement (FTA) with environmental provisions between northern and southern countries. We explicitly consider clean technology transfers from the North to the South and the enforcement levels of adopting clean technology in the South, which have not been discussed so far. Southern producers benefit greatly from having unimpeded access to a northern market, but they are reluctant to use new high-cost, clean technology provided by the North. We investigate how environmentally conscious northern countries could design an FTA in which southern countries are provided with sufficient membership benefits but follow tighter enforcement requirements. We provide a quantitative evaluation of FTA policies using a numerical example.