IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v15y2001i3p113-130.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bridging the Trade-Environment Divide

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel C. Esty

Abstract

Perceived conflict between trade liberalization and environmental protection can be traced to a number of issues. Some tensions relate to the environmental Kuznets curve and whether economic growth yields environmental benefits. Other concerns arise from efforts to address transboundary externalities and disputes over the role of trade measures as an environmental enforcement tool. Another set of issues centers on the risk of a race-toward-the-bottom regulatory dynamic and the limits of legitimate comparative advantage. This paper argues that, in an ecologically and economically interdependent world, trade and environmental policies are inescapably linked as a matter of descriptive reality and normative necessity.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel C. Esty, 2001. "Bridging the Trade-Environment Divide," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 113-130, Summer.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:15:y:2001:i:3:p:113-130
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jep.15.3.113
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.15.3.113
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lopez Ramon, 1994. "The Environment as a Factor of Production: The Effects of Economic Growth and Trade Liberalization," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 163-184, September.
    2. Zhao, Jinhua, 2000. "Trade and environmental distortions: coordinated intervention," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(4), pages 361-375, October.
    3. Werner Antweiler & Brian R. Copeland & M. Scott Taylor, 2001. "Is Free Trade Good for the Environment?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 877-908, September.
    4. Daniel C. Esty & Andre Dua, 1997. "Sustaining the Asia Pacific Miracle: Environmental Protection and Economic Integration," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 37, April.
    5. Beckerman, Wilfred, 1992. "Economic growth and the environment: Whose growth? whose environment?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 481-496, April.
    6. Revesz, Richard L., 1999. "Environmental Regulation, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and the Discounting of Human Lives," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt57q8284f, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    7. Chichilnisky, Graciela, 1994. "North-South Trade and the Global Environment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 851-874, September.
    8. AfDB AfDB, . "African Development Report 1999," African Development Report, African Development Bank, number 16 edited by Adeleke Oluwole Salami, July-Dece.
    9. William T. Harbaugh & Arik Levinson & David Molloy Wilson, 2002. "Reexamining The Empirical Evidence For An Environmental Kuznets Curve," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 541-551, August.
    10. Levinson, Arik, 1997. "A Note on Environmental Federalism: Interpreting Some Contradictory Results," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 359-366, July.
    11. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808, Decembrie.
    12. I. M. Destler & Peter J. Balint, 1999. "New Politics of American Trade: Trade, Labor, and the Environment, The," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number pa58, April.
    13. Oates, Wallace E. & Schwab, Robert M., 1988. "Economic competition among jurisdictions: efficiency enhancing or distortion inducing?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 333-354, April.
    14. Keohane, Robert O. & Nye, Joseph S., Jr., 2001. "Between Centralization and Fragmentation: The Club Model of Multilateral Cooperation and Problems of Democratic Legitimacy," Working Paper Series rwp01-004, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    15. Cooper, Richard N., 2000. "Trade and the environment," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(4), pages 483-529, October.
    16. Hauer, Grant & Runge, C. Ford, 2000. "Transboundary Pollution And The Kuznet'S Curve In The Global Commons," Working Papers 14423, University of Minnesota, Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy.
    17. Barrett, Scott, 1997. "The strategy of trade sanctions in international environmental agreements," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 345-361, November.
    18. Baumol,William J. & Oates,Wallace E., 1988. "The Theory of Environmental Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521322249, September.
    19. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Has Globalization Gone Too Far?," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 81-94, March.
    20. Nordström, Håkan & Vaughan, Scott, 1999. "Trade and the environment," WTO Special Studies, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division, volume 4, number 4.
    21. Shafik, Nemat & Bandyopadhyay, Sushenjit, 1992. "Economic growth and environmental quality : time series and cross-country evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 904, The World Bank.
    22. Selden Thomas M. & Song Daqing, 1994. "Environmental Quality and Development: Is There a Kuznets Curve for Air Pollution Emissions?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 147-162, September.
    23. Fredriksson, P.G., 1999. "Trade, Global Policy, and the Environment," World Bank - Discussion Papers 402, World Bank.
    24. Daniel Esty, 1994. "Greening the GATT: Trade, Environment, and the Future," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 40, April.
    25. Bhagwati, Jagdish, 2000. "On thinking clearly about the linkage between trade and the environment," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(4), pages 483-529, October.
    26. Jeffrey J. Schott, 2000. "WTO after Seattle, The," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 317, April.
    27. Arvind Subramanian, 1992. "Trade Measures for Environment: A Nearly Empty Box?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(1), pages 135-152, January.
    28. Mendelsohn, Robert, 1986. "Regulating heterogeneous emissions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 301-312, December.
    29. Levinson, Arik, 1999. "NIMBY taxes matter: the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 31-51, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jha, Raghbendra & Murthy, K. V. Bhanu, 2003. "An inverse global environmental Kuznets curve," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 352-368, June.
    2. Brian R. Copeland & M. Scott Taylor, 2004. "Trade, Growth, and the Environment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(1), pages 7-71, March.
    3. Blackman, Allen & Mathis, Mitchell & Nelson, Peter, 2001. "The Greening of Development Economics: A Survey," Discussion Papers 10662, Resources for the Future.
    4. Jie He, 2007. "Is the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis valid for developing countries? A survey," Cahiers de recherche 07-03, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    5. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 2003. "The Environment and Globalization," NBER Working Papers 10090, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Frankel, Jeffrey A., 2009. "Environmental Effects of International Trade," Scholarly Articles 4481652, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    7. Stern, David I., 2004. "The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1419-1439, August.
    8. Bradford David F. & Fender Rebecca A & Shore Stephen H. & Wagner Martin, 2005. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Exploring a Fresh Specification," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-28, June.
    9. Sturm, Daniel & Ulph, Alistair, 2002. "Environment, trade, political economy and imperfect information: a survey," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 0204, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    10. Richard T. Carson, 2010. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: Seeking Empirical Regularity and Theoretical Structure," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 4(1), pages 3-23, Winter.
    11. David I. Stern, 2017. "The environmental Kuznets curve after 25 years," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 7-28, April.
    12. Valeria Costantini & Chiara Martini, 2010. "A Modified Environmental Kuznets Curve for sustainable development assessment using panel data," International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 10(1/2), pages 84-122.
    13. He, Jie & Richard, Patrick, 2010. "Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 in Canada," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1083-1093, March.
    14. Stern, David I., 2014. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve: A Primer," Working Papers 249424, Australian National University, Centre for Climate Economics & Policy.
    15. Pascalau, Razvan & Qirjo, Dhimitri, 2017. "TTIP and the Environmental Kuznets Curve," MPRA Paper 80192, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2004. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 431-455, August.
    17. Tunahan Hacıimamoğlu & Oğuzhan Sungur, 2024. "How Do Economic Growth, Renewable Energy Consumption, and Political Stability Affect Environmental Sustainability in the United States? Insights from a Modified Ecological Footprint Model," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(4), pages 20649-20676, December.
    18. He, Jie & Wang, Hua, 2012. "Economic structure, development policy and environmental quality: An empirical analysis of environmental Kuznets curves with Chinese municipal data," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 49-59.
    19. Jaeger, William K. & Kolpin, Van & Siegel, Ryan, 2023. "The environmental Kuznets curve reconsidered," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    20. Barbier,Edward B., 2007. "Natural Resources and Economic Development," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521706513.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F18 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Environment
    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • Q28 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:15:y:2001:i:3:p:113-130. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.