IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/revmar/v5y2013i3p329-361.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Foreign Trade and Investment Lead to Higher CO2 Emissions? Evidence from Cross-Country Empirical Estimates

Author

Listed:
  • Debashis Chakraborty
  • Sacchidananda Mukherjee

Abstract

The waves of globalisation in the past decades have increased the cross-country trade and investment flows, which also raise serious concerns over environmental sustainability and climate change owing to the following three effects. First, through scale effect the growing output and exports of the polluting sectors may adversely influence environmental balance. Secondly, growing trade volume can lead to change in industry structure and output composition resulting from composition effect , which may or may not have adverse environmental repercussions. Finally, the technique effect determines the pace of improvement in emission abatement standards and regulatory policies in an economy with rise in trade orientation. The present analysis attempts to analyse the effects of trade and investment orientation with respect to a particular climate change concern, namely per capita CO 2 emissions, through panel data model for a set of 181 countries over 1980–2009. The empirical findings confirm that both in case of lower and higher income countries, higher merchandise and service trade growth leads to higher per capita CO 2 emission growth in their territories. In addition, both FDI inward and outward stock is found to be positively related to CO 2 emission, reflecting a complementary relationship between the two. The empirical results indicate that the composition, scale and technology effects significantly influence the openness—per capita CO 2 emission interrelationship across countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Debashis Chakraborty & Sacchidananda Mukherjee, 2013. "Do Foreign Trade and Investment Lead to Higher CO2 Emissions? Evidence from Cross-Country Empirical Estimates," Review of Market Integration, India Development Foundation, vol. 5(3), pages 329-361, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:revmar:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:329-361
    DOI: 10.1177/0974929214538363
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0974929214538363
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0974929214538363?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Talberth, John & Bohara, Alok K., 2006. "Economic openness and green GDP," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 743-758, July.
    2. Managi, Shunsuke & Hibiki, Akira & Tsurumi, Tetsuya, 2009. "Does trade openness improve environmental quality?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 346-363, November.
    3. Cristea, Anca & Hummels, David & Puzzello, Laura & Avetisyan, Misak, 2013. "Trade and the greenhouse gas emissions from international freight transport," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 153-173.
    4. 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.
    5. He, Jie, 2006. "Pollution haven hypothesis and environmental impacts of foreign direct investment: The case of industrial emission of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in Chinese provinces," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 228-245, November.
    6. Brian R. Copeland & M. Scott Taylor, 1994. "North-South Trade and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 109(3), pages 755-787.
    7. Susmita Dasgupta & Ashoka Mody & Subhendu Roy & David Wheeler, 2001. "Environmental Regulation and Development: A Cross-country Empirical Analysis," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 173-187.
    8. Matthew A. Cole & Robert J.R. Elliott & Jing Zhang, 2011. "Growth, Foreign Direct Investment, And The Environment: Evidence From Chinese Cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 121-138, February.
    9. Houssem Eddine Chebbi & Marcelo Olarreaga & Habib Zitouna, 2011. "Trade Openness Andco2emissions In Tunisia," Middle East Development Journal (MEDJ), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(01), pages 29-53.
    10. Michael Grubb, 2003. "The Economics of the Kyoto Protocol," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 4(3), pages 143-189, July.
    11. Boys, Kathryn A. & Grant, Jason H., 2010. "Iso 14000 Standards: Voluntary Environmental Governance As A Trade Facilitation Strategy?," 2010 Annual Meeting, July 25-27, 2010, Denver, Colorado 61855, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. Mahvash Saeed Qureshi, 2006. "Trade Liberalization, Environment and Poverty: A Developing Country Perspective," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-45, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. 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.
    14. David Popp, 2011. "International Technology Transfer, Climate Change, and the Clean Development Mechanism," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 5(1), pages 131-152, Winter.
    15. Adam B. Jaffe & Karen Palmer, 1997. "Environmental Regulation And Innovation: A Panel Data Study," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 610-619, November.
    16. Baek, Jungho & Cho, Yongsung & Koo, Won W., 2009. "The environmental consequences of globalization: A country-specific time-series analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(8-9), pages 2255-2264, June.
    17. Hyun Seok Kim & Won W. Koo, 2011. "Impacts of regulating greenhouse gas emissions on livestock trade flows," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 42(6), pages 679-684, November.
    18. Kakali Mukhopadhyay, 2006. "Impact on the Environment of Thailand's Trade with OECD Countries," STUDIES IN TRADE AND INVESTMENT, in: Xuan Zengpei & Joong-Wan Cho & Marc Proksch & Yann Duval (ed.), Asia-Pacific Trade and Investment Review, volume 2, chapter 2, pages 25-46, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
    19. Sacchidananda Mukherjee & Debashis Chakraborty, 2013. "Is environmental sustainability influenced by socioeconomic and sociopolitical factors? cross‐country empirical evidence," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 353-371, November.
    20. Youguo Zhang, 2012. "Scale, Technique and Composition Effects in Trade-Related Carbon Emissions in China," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 51(3), pages 371-389, March.
    21. Gene M. Grossman & Alan B. Krueger, 1995. "Economic Growth and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 110(2), pages 353-377.
    22. List, John A. & Co, Catherine Y., 2000. "The Effects of Environmental Regulations on Foreign Direct Investment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-20, July.
    23. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Andrew K. Rose, 2005. "Is Trade Good or Bad for the Environment? Sorting Out the Causality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 85-91, February.
    24. Agras, Jean & Chapman, Duane, 1999. "A dynamic approach to the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 267-277, February.
    25. Judith M. Dean & Mary E. Lovely & Hua Wang, 2017. "Are foreign investors attracted to weak environmental regulations? Evaluating the evidence from China," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Mary E Lovely (ed.), International Economic Integration and Domestic Performance, chapter 9, pages 155-167, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    26. Giovanni Marin & Massimiliano Mazzanti, 2013. "The evolution of environmental and labor productivity dynamics," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 357-399, April.
    27. World Bank, 2014. "World Development Indicators 2014," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 18237, December.
    28. Ang, James B., 2009. "CO2 emissions, research and technology transfer in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(10), pages 2658-2665, August.
    29. Laborde, David, 2011. "Climate Change and Agriculture In South Asia: Looking for An Optimal Trade Policy," 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 104526, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    30. Zaman, Khalid & Khan, Muhammad Mushtaq & Ahmad, Mehboob & Khilji, Bashir Ahmad, 2012. "The relationship between agricultural technologies and carbon emissions in Pakistan: Peril and promise," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 1632-1639.
    31. Gavrilova, Olga & Jonas, Matthias & Erb, Karlheinz & Haberl, Helmut, 2010. "International trade and Austria's livestock system: Direct and hidden carbon emission flows associated with production and consumption of products," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 920-929, February.
    32. Garnett, Tara, 2011. "Where are the best opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the food system (including the food chain)?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(S1), pages 23-32.
    33. Tetsuya Tsurumi & Shunsuke Managi, 2014. "The effect of trade openness on deforestation: empirical analysis for 142 countries," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 16(4), pages 305-324, October.
    34. Kim, Man-Keun & Pang, Arwin, 2011. "Impact of Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions on US Cattle Industry and Trade Competitiveness," 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 103705, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    35. Shafik, Nemat, 1994. "Economic Development and Environmental Quality: An Econometric Analysis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(0), pages 757-773, Supplemen.
    36. Helen Tammela Naughton, 2010. "Globalization and Emissions in Europe," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 7(2), pages 503-519, December.
    37. Managi, Shunsuke & Kumar, Surender, 2009. "Trade-induced technological change: Analyzing economic and environmental outcomes," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 721-732, May.
    38. Debashis Chakraborty & Sacchidananda Mukherjee, 2013. "Fiscal Subsidies and Environmental Sustainability: What does the Cross-country Empirical Estimates Suggest?," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 48(3), pages 383-397, August.
    39. Yuquing Xing & Charles Kolstad, 2002. "Do Lax Environmental Regulations Attract Foreign Investment?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 21(1), pages 1-22, January.
    40. Cole, Matthew A. & Elliott, Robert J. R., 2003. "Determining the trade-environment composition effect: the role of capital, labor and environmental regulations," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 363-383, November.
    41. Leila Baghdadi & Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso & Celestino Suárez-Burguet & Habib Zitouna, 2012. "Is the road to regional integration paved with pollution convergence?," Working Papers 2012/03, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    42. Garnett, Tara, 2011. "Where are the best opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the food system (including the food chain)?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(Supplemen), pages 23-32, January.
    43. Matthew A. Cole & Robert J. R. Elliott, 2005. "FDI and the Capital Intensity of “Dirty” Sectors: A Missing Piece of the Pollution Haven Puzzle," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(4), pages 530-548, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yaya Keho, 2015. "Is Foreign Direct Investment Good or Bad for the Environment? Times Series Evidence from ECOWAS Countries," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(3), pages 1916-1927.
    2. Lu, Zhou & Mahalik, Mantu Kumar & Mahalik, Hrushikesh & Zhao, Rui, 2022. "The moderating effects of democracy and technology adoption on the relationship between trade liberalisation and carbon emissions," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    3. Zakari, Abdulrasheed & Li, Guo & Khan, Irfan & Jindal, Abhinav & Tawiah, Vincent & Alvarado, Rafael, 2022. "Are abundant energy resources and Chinese business a solution to environmental prosperity in Africa?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    4. Abdelzaher, Dina M. & Martynov, Aleksey & Abdel Zaher, Angie M., 2020. "Vulnerability to climate change: Are innovative countries in a better position?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    5. Fuzhong Chen & Guohai Jiang & Kangyin Dong, 2022. "How do FDI inflows curvilinearly affect carbon emissions? Threshold effects of energy service availability and cleanliness," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 798-824, December.

    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. Debashis Chakraborty & Sacchidananda Mukherjee, 2013. "Do Trade and Investment Flows Lead to Higher CO2 Emissions? Some Panel Estimation Results," Working Papers 1321, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.
    2. Roy, Jayjit, 2017. "On the environmental consequences of intra-industry trade," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 50-67.
    3. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Nasreen, Samia & Ahmed, Khalid & Hammoudeh, Shawkat, 2017. "Trade openness–carbon emissions nexus: The importance of turning points of trade openness for country panels," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 221-232.
    4. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Nasreen, Samia & Abbas, Faisal & Anis, Omri, 2015. "Does foreign direct investment impede environmental quality in high-, middle-, and low-income countries?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 275-287.
    5. Wen Jun & Muhammad Zakaria & Syed Jawad Hussain Shahzad & Hamid Mahmood, 2018. "Effect of FDI on Pollution in China: New Insights Based on Wavelet Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-20, October.
    6. He, Jie, 2010. "What is the role of openness for China's aggregate industrial SO2 emission?: A structural analysis based on the Divisia decomposition method," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 868-886, February.
    7. Matthew A. Cole & Robert J.R. Elliott & Jing Zhang, 2011. "Growth, Foreign Direct Investment, And The Environment: Evidence From Chinese Cities," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 121-138, February.
    8. Jie HE, 2005. "Economic Determinants for China’s Industrial SO2 Emission: Reduced vs. Structural form and the role of international trade," Working Papers 200505, CERDI.
    9. Dhimitri Qirjo & Razvan Pascalau, 2019. "The Role of TTIP on the Environment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(4), pages 1262-1285, April.
    10. Ali, Wajahat & Abdullah, Azrai & Azam, Muhammad, 2017. "Re-visiting the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for Malaysia: Fresh evidence from ARDL bounds testing approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 990-1000.
    11. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Balsalobre-Lorente, Daniel & Sinha, Avik, 2019. "Foreign Direct Investment–CO2 Emissions Nexus in Middle East and North African countries: Importance of Biomass Energy Consumption," MPRA Paper 91729, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 19 Jan 2019.
    12. Natalia Zugravu-Soilita, 2018. "The impact of trade in environmental goods on pollution: what are we learning from the transition economies’ experience?," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 20(4), pages 785-827, October.
    13. Ling, Chong Hui & Ahmed, Khalid & Muhamad, Rusnah binti & Shahbaz, Muhammad, 2015. "Decomposing the trade-environment nexus for Malaysia: What do the technique, scale, composition and comparative advantage effect indicate?," MPRA Paper 67165, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 09 Oct 2015.
    14. Chang, Chun-Ping & Wen, Jun & Dong, Minyi & Hao, Yu, 2018. "Does government ideology affect environmental pollutions? New evidence from instrumental variable quantile regression estimations," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 386-400.
    15. Xiao Chen & Alan Woodland, 2013. "International trade and climate change," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(3), pages 381-413, June.
    16. Yuping Deng & Helian Xu, 2015. "International Direct Investment and Transboundary Pollution: An Empirical Analysis of Complex Networks," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-25, April.
    17. Imad Moosa, 2019. "The Environmental Effects of FDI: Evidence from MENA Countries," Working Papers 1321, Economic Research Forum, revised 21 Aug 2019.
    18. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Haouas, Ilham & Hoang, Thi Hong Van, 2019. "Economic growth and environmental degradation in Vietnam: Is the environmental Kuznets curve a complete picture?," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 197-218.
    19. Fozia Latif Gill & K Kuperan Viswanathan & Mohd Zaini Abdul Karim, 2018. "The Critical Review of the Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH)," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 8(1), pages 167-174.
    20. William Bekoe & Talatu Jalloh, 2023. "Assessing the Economic Implications of Free Trade on Environmental Quality: Empirical Evidence from Africa," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 84(1), pages 19-36, January.

    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:sae:revmar:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:329-361. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.idfresearch.org .

    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.