International trade and emission offshoring can reduce a country's domestic carbon dioxide emissions, helping it to reach emission reduction targets set under the prevailing territorial climate policy frameworks. We ask what is the net contribution of trade to national production-based emissions. Existing metrics (consumption-based emissions and the technology-adjusted balance of emissions embodied in trade) do not answer this question. Based on global multi-regional input-output tables and the domestic technology assumption, we calculate net emission onshoring as the difference between the emissions embodied in gross exports (onshoring) and the emissions avoided by gross imports (offshoring) for 43 countries between 20 0 0-2014. We find that the USA offshores emissions and China onshores emissions; the aggregate trade balance explains this result while the trade composition plays a negligible role in either country. In general there is no cross-country relationship between net offshoring and per-capita income, and neither one between trade specialization in emission-intensive products and per-capita income. The developed countries' absolute decoupling of economic growth and production-based emissions since 20 0 0 is "genuine" in the sense that it reflects domestic economic developments and is not owed to emission offshoring.
We use input-output analysis and Levinson's structural decomposition method to measure China's CO2 emissions under the no-trade hypothesis, to calculate how international trade affects China's emissions. We also analyze the driving factors of the difference between hypothetical no-trade CO2 emissions and actual emissions and discuss the existence of "pollution haven hypothesis" (PHH) in China. The results show that (1) from 2000 to 2017, the hypothetical no-trade CO2 emissions are 2.43%-14.67% lower than actual emissions. The scale effect is the main cause of this difference, while the composition effect fluctuates and has little impact. (2) Although exports make other economies' CO2 emissions transfer to China, imports also help avoid China's emissions from some carbon-intensive sectors. (3) International trade has little impact on the cleanliness of China's industry composition. The no-trade industry composition is slightly cleaner than the actual one before 2010, after which trade improves the cleanliness of industry composition to a small extent. PHH is invalid for China in recent years, and results for most developing countries do not support PHH. (4) The relationship between no-trade effects and income per capita for all the economies does not also support PHH. Most economies reduce emissions, and their industry compositions are cleaner because of trade, regardless of their development degree.
We use input–output analysis and Levinson’s structural decomposition method to measure China’s CO2 emissions under the no-trade hypothesis, to calculate how international trade affects China’s emissions. We also analyze the driving factors of the difference between hypothetical no-trade CO2 emissions and actual emissions and discuss the existence of “pollution haven hypothesis” (PHH) in China. The results show that (1) from 2000 to 2017, the hypothetical no-trade CO2 emissions are 2.43–14.67% lower than actual emissions. The scale effect is the main cause of this difference, while the composition effect fluctuates and has little impact. (2) Although exports make other economies’ CO2 emissions transfer to China, imports also help avoid China’s emissions from some carbon-intensive sectors. (3) International trade has little impact on the cleanliness of China’s industry composition. The no-trade industry composition is slightly cleaner than the actual one before 2010, after which trade improves the cleanliness of industry composition to a small extent. PHH is invalid for China in recent years, and results for most developing countries do not support PHH. (4) The relationship between no-trade effects and income per capita for all the economies does not also support PHH. Most economies reduce emissions, and their industry compositions are cleaner because of trade, regardless of their development degree.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.