EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Unravelling the Worldwide Pollution Haven Effect

Jean-Marie Grether, Nicole Mathys and Jaime de Melo

Chapter 23 in Developing Countries in the World Economy, 2015, pp 581-612 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: This paper tackles the 'pollution haven' argument by estimating the pollution content of imports (PCl). The PCl is then decomposed into three components: (i) a 'deep' component (i.e. traditional variables unrelated to the environmental debate); (ii) a factor endowment component and (iii) a 'pollution haven' component reflecting the impact of differences in environmental policies. The estimation is carried out for 1987 for an extensive data set covering 10 pollutants, 48 countries and 79 lSIC four-digit sectors. Decompositions based on cross-section econometric estimates suggest a significant pollution haven effect, which increases the PCl of the North because of stricter environmental regulations in the North. At the same time, the factor endowment effect lowers the PCl of the North, as the North is relatively well-endowed in capital and pollution-intensive activities are capital intensive. On a global scale, because the bulk of trade is intra-regional with a high North-North share, these effects are small relative to the 'deep' determinants of the worldwide PCl. Robustness checks performed on a more recent dataset, but limited to sulphur dioxide, confirm these results. In sum, differences in factor endowments and environmental policies only marginally affected the PCl of world trade at the end of the 1980s.

Keywords: Trade Barriers and Market Structure; Quantitative Restrictions; Political Economy and Migration; Trade and the Environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814494908_0023 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814494908_0023 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
Journal Article: Unravelling the worldwide pollution haven effect (2012) Downloads
Working Paper: Unravelling the Worldwide Pollution Haven Effect (2012) Downloads
Working Paper: Unravelling the Worldwide Pollution Haven Effect (2012) Downloads
Working Paper: Unravelling the Worldwide Pollution Haven Effect (2011) Downloads
Working Paper: Unravelling the Worldwide Pollution Haven Effect (2011) Downloads
Working Paper: Unraveling the World-Wide Pollution Haven Effect (2006) Downloads
Working Paper: Unravelling the World-Wide Pollution Haven Effect (2006) Downloads
Working Paper: Unraveling the World-Wide Pollution Haven Effect (2006) Downloads
Working Paper: Unraveling the World-Wide Pollution Haven Effect (2006) Downloads
Working Paper: Unraveling the worldwide pollution haven effect (2006) Downloads
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:wsi:wschap:9789814494908_0023

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-02
Handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9789814494908_0023