Trade Liberalization and Pollution Havens

Josh Ederington, Arik Levinson and Jenny Minier

No 10585, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: U.S. Presidential Executive Order 13141 commits the United States to a careful assessment and consideration of the environmental impacts of trade agreements.' The most direct mechanism through which trade liberalization would affect environmental quality in the U.S. is through changes in the composition of industries. Freer trade means greater specialization, increasing the concentration of polluting industries in some countries and decreasing it in others. Indeed, in this paper we predict a substantial reduction in U.S. pollution from 1978-94 due entirely to a shift in the composition of U.S. manufacturing toward cleaner industries. We then use annual industry-level data on imports to the U.S. to examine whether this compositional shift can be traced to the significant trade liberalization that occurred over the same time period; we conclude that no such connection exists. First, we find that a shift toward cleaner industries, similar to that observed in U.S. manufacturing, has also occurred among U.S. imports. Second, we find no evidence that pollution-intensive industries have been disproportionately affected by the tariff changes over that time period.

JEL-codes: F18 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-reg
Note: ITI EEE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (83)

Published as Ederington Josh & Levinson Arik & Minier Jenny, 2004. "Trade Liberalization and Pollution Havens," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 1-24, November.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10585.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Trade Liberalization And Pollution Havens (2005)
Journal Article: Trade Liberalization and Pollution Havens (2004)
Working Paper: Trade Liberalization and Pollution Havens (2004)
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:nbr:nberwo:10585

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10585

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().