 THE EFFECTS OF TRADE LIBERALIZATION ON THE ENVIRONMENT: AN EMPIRICAL STUDYGeoffrey R. McCarney and Wiktor Adamowicz No 34157, Annual Meeting, 2005, July 6-8, San Francisco, CA from Canadian Agricultural Economics Society Abstract: We seek to contribute to the emerging economic theory on trade, the environment and development. Using panel data across countries, econometric models are estimated to predict the effects of openness on organic water pollutant (BOD) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Results indicate that freer trade significantly increases emissions of both pollutants, thus reducing environmental quality. Moreover, the panel nature of the data allows heterogeneity across countries to be controlled, so that comparisons can be made of how different national characteristics influence the environmental impact of freer trade. By testing the effects of democratic versus autocratic governance, it is found that while greater democracy can induce significant reductions in BOD emissions as openness increases, it may also lead to increased CO2 levels. Meanwhile, by testing for and failing to reject the pollution haven hypothesis, it is suggested that environmental gains from openness in relatively rich countries may be coming at the expense of environmental degradation in poorer countries. Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:caes05:34157 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Annual Meeting, 2005, July 6-8, San Francisco, CA from Canadian Agricultural Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC. |
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