Trade and the Environment: New Methods, Measurements, and Results

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Trade and the Environment: New Methods, Measurements, and Results Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractWe review recent research linking international trade to the environment, with a focus on new results and methods. The review is given structure by a novel decomposition linking changes in emissions to changes in productive activity at the plant, firm, industry, and national levels. While some new results have emerged from the application of a Melitz-style approach to trade and the environment, its full potential has not yet been exploited. We discuss existing empirical and theoretical work, introduce three new hypotheses, and suggest paths for future researchers to follow.JEL-Codes: F180, Q500.

Structural Changes and Sustainability. A Selected Review of the Empirical Evidence

“…Production strategies at the micro level and their impact on emissions complete the picture of the impact of trade on emissions at the global level. From our perspective, and in line with (Cherniwchan et al, 2017), the pollution offshoring hypothesis is particularly interesting. Although similar to the PHH, according to (Cherniwchan et al, 2017) [p. 4] it 'explicitly links firm level decisions to offshore dirty intermediate inputs to trade liberalization'.…”

“…More recently, Aichele and Felbermayr (2015) empirically assessed the post-Kyoto protocol effects in terms of emissions trading and found that the binding commitments under Kyoto have increased committed countries' embodied carbon imports from non-committed countries, by around 8% and increased the emissions intensity of their imports by about 3%. (Cherniwchan et al, 2017) provides a recent review of the methods, findings and policy implications for trade and the environment, which points to the importance of micro-level analyses for empirical assessment of the PHH. The authors combine reviews of traditional decomposition analyses with a partial equilibrium model of firms (and plants) strategic decisions.…”

Environmental regulation and love for variety

“…The relationship between trade and environmental outcomes has been the focus of a large literature for some time (see for instance Antweiler et al, ; Cherniwchan et al, ; Cole & Elliott, ; Copeland & Taylor, ; Halicioglu & Ketenci, ; Levinson & Taylor, ). While most of the initial research was based on interindustry trade, there has been an increasing trend in research on intra‐industry trade, recognizing the vast volume of trade that happens within industries (see Aralas & Hoehn, ; Benarroch & Weder, ; Cole & Elliott, ; Fung & Maechler, ; Gürtzgen & Rauscher, ; Haupt, ; Levy & Dinopoulos, ; Roy, among others).…”

Environmental and resource economics: A Canadian retrospective

“…This research agenda is just beginning to be exploited in the trade and environment literature. Cherniwchan et al (2017) review and synthesize this work, using a framework that decomposes changes in sectoral emission intensities into changes in the composition of output across firms within a sector and changes in the composition of tasks within firms as well as actual changes in emission intensities at the task level.…”