Trade Imbalance, Heterogeneous Firms and Pollution Emissions: Evidence from China’s Manufacturing Sector

Ling-Yun He and Xi Lin

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 2021, vol. 57, issue 4, 1008-1033

Abstract: China’s trade imbalance and environmental pollution have become a focus of world interest. As firms are those that are emitting pollutants, do trade imbalances affect firm-level pollution emissions? In this study, we use data on Chinese manufacturing firms to investigate the impacts of trade imbalances on firms’ pollution emissions. Our results indicate that trade imbalances (export-to-import ratio) are positively related to firms’ pollution emissions. Specifically, trade surpluses lead to an increase in pollution emissions, whereas trade deficits reduce emissions. These impacts are mainly due to change in the behavior of individual firms, including the scale, factor composition, and technical effects. Trade imbalances have heterogeneous impacts on firms with different types of ownership, in different sectors, and different provinces. Our study presents the first evidence on the impacts of trade imbalances on firm-level pollution emissions.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1540496X.2019.1612742 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:mes:emfitr:v:57:y:2021:i:4:p:1008-1033

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MREE20

DOI: 10.1080/1540496X.2019.1612742

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Emerging Markets Finance and Trade from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().