IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cdiwps/halshs-00564688.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Determinants for China's Industrial SO2 Emission: Reduced vs. Structural form and the role of international trade

Author

Listed:
  • Jie He

    (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

In this paper, basing on panel data on Chinese provincial level from 1991-2000, we test, firstly, the existence of EKC for industrial SO2 emission density. Following, we decompose the economical determinants of this SO2 emission density into: income effect (GDPPC), scale effect (Industrial GDP per km2) and composition effect (industrial capitalistic ratio). And in the third step, we study the direct and indirect role of international trade intensity ((X+M)/GDP). Instead of a supposed EKC, we find ever-increasing trend in industrial SO2 emission density with respect to income growth for most Chinese provinces when the three largest cities (Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai) directly under central government are taken off from our database. Following, confirming Grossman (1995), we succeed in decomposing industrial SO2 emission density into its three famous economic "effects". However, different from our expectation, the composition effect, measured by industrial capitalistic ratio K/L in this paper, instead of being a pollution-increasing role as generally accepted idea, turns out to lead industrial SO2 density to reduce as a technology-reinforcing factor. For the role of trade, besides the positive direct impact on industrial SO2 density, we find equally some "pollution haven" evidences. In addition, our results show for most provinces, their comparative advantage stays still in labour-intensive sectors, increase in the capitalistic ratio is proven to be environment-friendly through its technological "pollution-abatement" effect until this ratio reach the level of 83333 yuan/person, which can be considered as the threshold to distinguish capital-intensive sector. Due to these different aspect's effects, corresponding to the conclusion of ACT (1998, 2001), the total effect of trade on industrial SO2 pollution does not turn out to be an important factor for industrial SO2 emission density. Including all these co-related economic determinants into a more general graphical analysis, we find that, for most provinces whose actual income and capitalistic ratio stay still at moderate level, further income growth and capital accumulation are generally environment-friendly factor in openness process. However, the further enlargement of openness degree will result in environment deterioration for the provinces that have relatively low income and too low or too high capitalistic ratio. The necessary policy to reduce this possible deterioration is to adopt besides the open policy, the complementary policies aiming at reinforcing public consciences on environment quality (through income effect) and encouraging R&D activities to increase technological efficiency in pollution abatement.

Suggested Citation

  • Jie He, 2011. "Economic Determinants for China's Industrial SO2 Emission: Reduced vs. Structural form and the role of international trade," CERDI Working papers halshs-00564688, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:cdiwps:halshs-00564688
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00564688
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00564688/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. de Bruyn, S. M. & van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. & Opschoor, J. B., 1998. "Economic growth and emissions: reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental Kuznets curves," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 161-175, May.
    2. Cole, M.A. & Rayner, A.J. & Bates, J.M., 1997. "The environmental Kuznets curve: an empirical analysis," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 401-416, November.
    3. Suri, Vivek & Chapman, Duane, 1998. "Economic growth, trade and energy: implications for the environmental Kuznets curve," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 195-208, May.
    4. Grossman, G.M & Krueger, A.B., 1991. "Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement," Papers 158, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
    5. Dinda, Soumyananda & Coondoo, Dipankor & Pal, Manoranjan, 2000. "Air quality and economic growth: an empirical study," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 409-423, September.
    6. Rock, Michael T., 1996. "Pollution intensity of GDP and trade policy: Can the World Bank be wrong?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 471-479, March.
    7. 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.
    8. Kaufmann, Robert K. & Davidsdottir, Brynhildur & Garnham, Sophie & Pauly, Peter, 1998. "The determinants of atmospheric SO2 concentrations: reconsidering the environmental Kuznets curve," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 209-220, May.
    9. De Bruyn, Sander M., 1997. "Explaining the environmental Kuznets curve: structural change and international agreements in reducing sulphur emissions," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 485-503, November.
    10. Stern , David I., 1998. "Progress on the environmental Kuznets curve?," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 173-196, May.
    11. Gene M. Grossman & Alan B. Krueger, 1995. "Economic Growth and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 353-377.
    12. Rothman, Dale S., 1998. "Environmental Kuznets curves--real progress or passing the buck?: A case for consumption-based approaches," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 177-194, May.
    13. Agras, Jean & Chapman, Duane, 1999. "A dynamic approach to the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 267-277, February.
    14. Hettige, Hemamala & Lucas, Robert E B & Wheeler, David, 1992. "The Toxic Intensity of Industrial Production: Global Patterns, Trends, and Trade Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(2), pages 478-481, May.
    15. McGuire, Martin C., 1982. "Regulation, factor rewards, and international trade," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 335-354, April.
    16. Lucas, Robert E.B. & Wheeler, David & Hettige, Hemamala, 1992. "Economic development, environmental regulation, and the international migration of toxic industrial pollution : 1960-88," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1062, The World Bank.
    17. CARSON, RICHARd T. & JEON, YONGIL & McCUBBIN, DONALD R., 1997. "The relationship between air pollution emissions and income: US Data," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 433-450, November.
    18. Vincent, Jeffrey R., 1997. "Testing for environmental Kuznets curves within a developing country," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 417-431, November.
    19. Roberts, J. Timmons & Grimes, Peter E., 1997. "Carbon intensity and economic development 1962-1991: A brief exploration of the environmental Kuznets curve," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 191-198, February.
    20. 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.
    21. 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.
    22. Hua Wang, 2000. "Pollution charges, community pressure, and abatement cost of industrial pollution in China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2337, The World Bank.
    23. Selden Thomas M. & Song Daqing, 1995. "Neoclassical Growth, the J Curve for Abatement, and the Inverted U Curve for Pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 162-168, September.
    24. 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.
    25. Sébastien Dessus & David Roland-Holst & Dominique van der Mensbrugghe, 1994. "Input-Based Pollution Estimates for Environmental Assessment in Developing Countries," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 101, OECD Publishing.
    26. 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.
    27. Brian R. Copeland & M. Scott Taylor, 1994. "North-South Trade and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 755-787.
    28. List, John A. & Gallet, Craig A., 1999. "The environmental Kuznets curve: does one size fit all?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 409-423, December.
    29. Brian R. Copeland & M. Scott Taylor, 1997. "A Simple Model of Trade, Capital Mobility, and the Environment," NBER Working Papers 5898, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    30. Panayotou, Theodore, 1997. "Demystifying the environmental Kuznets curve: turning a black box into a policy tool," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 465-484, November.
    31. 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.
    32. Torras, Mariano & Boyce, James K., 1998. "Income, inequality, and pollution: a reassessment of the environmental Kuznets Curve," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 147-160, May.
    33. Stern, David I. & Common, Michael S. & Barbier, Edward B., 1996. "Economic growth and environmental degradation: The environmental Kuznets curve and sustainable development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(7), pages 1151-1160, July.
    34. Pethig, Rudiger, 1976. "Pollution, welfare, and environmental policy in the theory of Comparative Advantage," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 160-169, February.
    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. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    37. Hua Wang & Wheeler, David, 1996. "Pricing industrial pollution in China : an econometric analysis of the levy system," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1644, The World Bank.
    38. Moomaw, William R. & Unruh, Gregory C., 1997. "Are environmental Kuznets curves misleading us? The case of CO2 emissions," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(4), pages 451-463, 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. Wen Wen & Qi Wang, 2017. "Are Developed Regions in China Achieving Their CO 2 Emissions Reduction Targets on Their Own?—Case of Beijing," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-25, November.

    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. 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.
    2. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2004. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 431-455, August.
    3. Roxana Pincheira & Felipe Zuniga, 2021. "Environmental Kuznets curve bibliographic map: a systematic literature review," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(S1), pages 1931-1956, April.
    4. He, Jie & Richard, Patrick, 2010. "Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 in Canada," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1083-1093, March.
    5. Marzio Galeotti, 2007. "Economic Growth And The Quality Of The Environment: Taking Stock," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 427-454, November.
    6. Stern, David I., 2004. "The Rise and Fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(8), pages 1419-1439, August.
    7. Theodore Panayotou, 2000. "Economic Growth and the Environment," CID Working Papers 56A, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    8. Lenzen, Manfred & Wier, Mette & Cohen, Claude & Hayami, Hitoshi & Pachauri, Shonali & Schaeffer, Roberto, 2006. "A comparative multivariate analysis of household energy requirements in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, India and Japan," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 181-207.
    9. 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.
    10. Stern, David I. & Common, Michael S., 2001. "Is There an Environmental Kuznets Curve for Sulfur?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 162-178, March.
    11. 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.
    12. Egli, Hannes, 2001. "Are cross-country studies of the Environmental Kuznets Curve misleading? New evidence from time series data for Germany," Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Diskussionspapiere 10/2001, University of Greifswald, Faculty of Law and Economics.
    13. Dinda, Soumyananda & Coondoo, Dipankor & Pal, Manoranjan, 2000. "Air quality and economic growth: an empirical study," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 409-423, September.
    14. Pandelis Mitsis, 2012. "Is there an Environmental Kuznets Curve in the Carbon Dioxide Emissions?," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 16-2012, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    15. Roca, Jordi & Padilla, Emilio & Farre, Mariona & Galletto, Vittorio, 2001. "Economic growth and atmospheric pollution in Spain: discussing the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 85-99, October.
    16. Sabrina Auci & Giovanni Trovato, 2018. "The environmental Kuznets curve within European countries and sectors: greenhouse emission, production function and technology," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 35(3), pages 895-915, December.
    17. Marzio Galeotti, 2003. "Economic Development and Environmental Protection," Working Papers 2003.89, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    18. 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.
    19. Sabuj Kumar Mandal & Devleena Chakravarty, 2017. "Role of energy in estimating turning point of Environmental Kuznets Curve: an econometric analysis of the existing studies," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 19(2), pages 387-401, October.
    20. Pascalau, Razvan & Qirjo, Dhimitri, 2017. "TTIP and the Environmental Kuznets Curve," MPRA Paper 80192, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    “pollution haven” hypothesis.; Decomposition; industrial SO2 emission; international trade; EKC; China; “pollution haven” hypothesis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products

    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:hal:cdiwps:halshs-00564688. 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: Contact - CERDI - Université Clermont Auvergne (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.