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FDI inflows remain an important source of economic growth and technology transfer for developing countries. However, the proponents of the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) argue that FDI inflows may result in the production of polluted goods in poor economies. The empirical testing of PHH reveals conflicting outcomes on the subject. This study argues that foreign firms’ choice of specific technologies and hence the validity of PHH can be determined by host countries’ level of education. For developing economies having low levels of schooling, FDI inflows will accompany polluted technologies. Nonetheless, when education levels exceed certain thresholds, FDI inflows may reduce CO 2 emissions. For our empirical investigation, we rely upon a large panel of 108 developing countries during 2000–2016. Our estimated outcomes, based on the panel cointegration method and panel vector error correction methods (P-VECM), confirm these moderating effects of human capital in the FDI–CO 2 emissions nexus. The empirical results also confirm the presence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for developing countries. These results have important policy implications for the sample economies.

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There is considerable debate whether the domestic political institutions (specifically, the country's level of democracy) of the host developing country toward foreign investors are effective in establishing the credibility of commitments are still underway, researchers have also analyzed the effect of international institutions such as (GATT-WTO) membership and Bilateral Investment treaties (BIT) in their role of establishing the credibility of commitment to attract foreign investments. In addition, most recent studies have examined the effect of International Trade Agreements (TAs) on FDI flows as they contain separate investment chapters and dispute settlement mechanism, thus providing confidence to investor regarding the security of their investments. We argue that there are qualitative differences among various types of trade agreements and full-fledged trade agreements (FTA-CU) provide credibility to foreign investors and democracy level in the host country conditions this effect whereas the partial scope agreements (PSA) are not sufficient in providing credibility of commitments and not moderated by democracy. This paper analyses the impact of heterogeneous TAs, and their interaction with domestic institutions, on FDI inflows. Statistical analyses for 122 developing countries from 1970 to 2005 support this argument. The method adopted relies on fixed effects estimator which is robust to control endogeneity on a large panel dataset. The strict erogeneity of results by using a method suggested by Baier and Bergstrand (2007) and no feedback effect found in sample. The results state that (1) More the FTA-CU concluded, larger the amount of FDI inflows are attracted into the developing countries and PSA are insignificant in determining the FDI inflow; (2) FTA-CU are complementary to democratic regime whereas the conditional effect of PSA with democracy on levels of FDI inflows is insignificant.

Developing economies are characterized by unstable and volatile growth performance. Some recent studies argue that this can potentially undermine their environmental quality. This study tests the impact of macroeconomic instability on pollution emissions for a large panel of developing countries. Thus, we extend the standard environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework and include the indicator of economic instability in addition to the other variables, including income, income squared, financial development, FDI, and trade openness. For this purpose, we use the annual dataset of 34 developing countries over the period 1985–2019. The empirical analysis comprises both short-run and long-run relationships among the selected variables, using panel cointegration and the Panel Vector Error Correction Model (P-VECM). The estimated results confirm our hypothesized pollution-enhancing effects of economic instability on the sample economies. Furthermore, we confirm the validity of the EKC hypothesis in the sample economies. These findings suggest that developing economies should ensure economic stability to control their CO2 emissions.

A long debate continues whether international trade institutions (specifically preferential trade agreements [PTAs]) affect security relations between states. Contradicting theories and empirical claims are put forward by realists and liberals. The former posit that the institutions are epiphenomenal and possess no power to constrain state behavior whereas the latter claim that the institutions are likely to promote cooperation by supplying forums for consultation, arbitration and adjudication, thus reducing the risk of war between states. This study identifies an important channel through which the legal dimension of trade agreements (hence dispute settlement mechanisms [DSMs] in PTAs) may have pacifying effects on the outbreaks of war. DSMs of PTAs do have strong implications for militarized interstate disputes (MIDs), although not directly, but through low-level of foreign policy disputes, such as economic sanctions. If economic sanctions are believed to escalate to violent conflict, PTA DSMs may reduce the probability of war by mitigating the escalation of economic sanctions. However, the level of legalism differs among DSMs in PTAs. The present study first confirms empirically that sanction disputes escalate to militarized disputes and further, addresses the selection issue by using bivariate probit model. I find a sizeable impact of medium level of legalism reducing the sanctions escalation into war whereas high level of legalism, in which the state sovereignty is limited, do reduce the probability of sanctions but have no impact on war probability. Further, the interstate political cooperation proves to be a strong determinant for highly legalistic PTAs but not in the case of medium level of legalism.

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Agreements Data Base (GPTAD) » qui recense plus de 268 accords de libre-échange, la communication propose une analyse des clauses environnementales pouvant figurer dans ces accords, en particulier dans les accords impliquant pays développés et pays émergents. Une première présentation qualitative permet de dégager les traits essentiels des phénomènes observés. Une analyse économétrique, fondée sur la méthode logit s'efforce ensuite d'identifier les facteurs déterminants de l'introduction des clauses environnementales, sous leurs différentes formes, dans les accords de libre-échange, régionaux ou non, multilatéraux ou bilatéraux, et tente de dégager les enjeux environnementaux dans les négociations Nord-Sud. Mots-clés : Accords de libre échange, Clauses environnementales, Négociations Nord-Sud, Intégration économique, Environnement) Environmental clauses in free trade agreements between developed and emerging countries-Analysis of determinants