EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Is there an environmental benefit to being an exporter? Evidence from firm level data

Svetlana Batrakova and Ronald Davies

No 201007, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: One of the greatest concerns over globalisation is its impact on the environment. This paper contributes to this debate by analysing the consequences of becoming an exporter on a firm's energy consumption. We show both theoretically and empirically that for low fuel intensity firms exporting status is associated with higher fuel consumption while for high fuel intensity firms exporting is results in decreased fuel consumption. Further analysis reveals that higher fuel consumption of low fuel intensity firms occurs after exporting, perhaps as a response to increased production. In contrast, firms using relatively large quantities of fuel decrease their energy use after exporting, perhaps by adopting more fuel-effcient technology. These results indicate that the use of aggregate data, as is the case in almost all studies of trade and the environment, is likely to conceal important connections between the two.

Keywords: Exporting; Energy; Heterogeneity; Quantiles; Matching; Exports--Environmental aspects; Trading companies--Energy consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 F18 L23 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-int
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/2638 First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Is there an environmental benefit to being an exporter? Evidence from firm-level data (2012) Downloads
Working Paper: Is there an environmental benefit to being an exporter? Evidence from firm level data (2010) 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:ucn:wpaper:201007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicolas Clifton ().

 
Page updated 2025-01-07
Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201007