Pierre Coster
PhD Candidate in Economics, University of Southern California
I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Southern California. My research is in international trade, spatial economics, and environmental economics.
Before USC, I studied at Sciences Po Paris and the Barcelona School of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. I have also worked at the European Central Bank and the OECD.
Research
Firms' Supply Chain Adaptation to Carbon Taxes
Abstract
This paper studies how firms adjust input sourcing in response to climate policy. Using the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) as a natural experiment and French product-level import and production data, we show that firms increasingly shifted imports of ETS-regulated inputs to non-EU countries over the 2010s as the policy became more stringent, indicating carbon leakage. This leakage is economically significant: the share of ETS-regulated products sourced from outside the EU rose by 4.3 percentage points after the ETS was implemented. Motivated by these empirical findings, we estimate a heterogeneous firm model using pre-ETS data. Simulating the model under a €100 carbon tax reproduces observed leakage, raises domestic prices and modestly reduces French emissions. Adding a carbon tariff similar to the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) reverses the leakage but further increases prices. The combined ETS+CBAM regime is seven times more effective than the ETS alone in reducing emissions.
Work in progress
- The Missing Intercept of Climate Change: Evidence from Agriculture. Poster
- Demand for Clean Household Energy: LPG in Rural Ghana.
With Kelsey Jack, Darby Jack, Paulina Oliva, and Georgette Owusu-Amankwah. - Firm Upgrading and a New Estimation of Product Quality.
- Who Moves In, Who Pays? Public Housing Mandates and Neighborhood Sorting in France.
- Spatial Mobility and Economic Welfare in France: Immigrant-Native Disparities in Commuting.
- Optimal Transport Networks with Local and Global Emissions.
With Lauri Esala and Hubert Massoni.