China shock: environmental impacts in Brazil

Victor Simões Dornelas () and Ariaster Baumgratz Chimeli

No 2019_29, Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP)

Abstract: We study whether the “China shock†, defined as China’s rapid emergence in global markets, caused environmental impacts in Brazilian municipalities, since previous evidence points to effects on real wages and formal sector employment over the period of 2000 to 2010. Building on recent theoretical developments, we implement a shift-share strategy to explore variation in economic specialization between municipalities and find that China’s direct influence on deforestation of the Amazon and Cerrado was on average insignificant, which is supported by the literature. On the other hand, China’s demand for commodities seems to have increased pollution-related mortality of children in mining municipalities, a result obtained by comparing it to mortality caused by other factors. However, we show that this is most likely explained by a municipality’s degree of specialization in mining activities rather than its exposure to trade with China. We conclude that the environmental impacts of the China shock on Brazilian municipalities were small, if not negligible.

Keywords: international trade; deforestation; infant mortality; Brazil; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F18 Q52 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-08-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-env and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.repec.eae.fea.usp.br/documentos/Dornelas_Chimeli_29WPa.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spa:wpaper:2019wpecon29

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers, Department of Economics from University of São Paulo (FEA-USP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Pedro Garcia Duarte ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).