Determinants of trade with solar energy technology components: evidence on the porter hypothesis?

Felix Groba ()

Applied Economics, 2014, vol. 46, issue 5, 503-526

Abstract: Studies analysing renewable energy (RE) market development usually investigate electricity capacity or investment. Characteristics, roles and determinants of trade with RE system components remain blurred. Policies are important in promoting RE utilization and innovation. Yet, their effect on determining exports remains ambiguous. The Porter hypothesis and the lead-market literature argue that environmental regulation leads to comparative export advantages. Empirical studies, however, reach diverging conclusions, rarely focus on the RE-sector and use broad proxies of environmental regulation.Focusing on solar energy technology components (SETCs), we believe this is the first study describing structure and development of international trade and estimating the role of RE policies on determining trade flows. We empirically estimate a gravity trade model using Poisson-Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood (PPML) estimation to test the role of RE policies and trade barriers on SETC exports. We use panel data representing annual bilateral trade flows of 21 OECD countries exporting SETCs to 118 importing countries between 1999 and 2007.We find a rapidly growing market with trade dominated by Europe. The study supports the Porter and the lead-market hypotheses as early adopters of RE policies gained a comparative advantage. Analysing the importer side, the study suggests that regulatory policies and import tariffs determine SETC export flows.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2013.857005 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Determinants of Trade with Solar Energy Technology Components: Evidence on the Porter Hypothesis? (2011)
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:taf:applec:v:46:y:2014:i:5:p:503-526

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2013.857005

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().