Environmental regulations and international trade: A quantitative economic analysis of world pollution emissions

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Duan, Yuwan; Ji, Ting; Lu, Yi; Wang, Siying
• 署名单位: Tsinghua University; Tsinghua University; University of British Columbia
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104521
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Pollution haven; Environment and trade; Quantitative trade; Environmental Kuznets curve; Strategic environmental policy

摘要

We develop and quantitatively evaluate a general equilibrium trade model with pollution as a byproduct of production to study the interactions between international trade, the environment, and environmental regulations. Our analysis suggests that environmental regulations provide a source of comparative advantage, but we fail to find evidence that reducing trade barriers causes pollution-intensive industries to concentrate in countries with weak environmental regulation stringency. The reason is that as a crucial determinant of pollution emissions and abatement, environmental regulations are weak in determining international specializations. By comparing environmental regulation stringency with other determinants of international trade, we identify productivity and trade costs as being the major forces that suppress the influence of environmental regulations on deciding international production and trade. Furthermore, we incorporate endogenous environmental policy into our framework and explore how environmental policy responds to trade liberalization. We allow for strategic environmental policy, but find its use as a substitute for tariffs to be quite limited. We also evaluate various forces that determine the overall impacts of international trade on worldwide pollution emissions. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.