Environmental regulations and international trade: A quantitative economic analysis of world pollution emissions
中文摘要
我们构建并定量评估了一个以污染作为生产副产品的一般均衡贸易模型，以研究国际贸易、环境与环境规制之间的相互作用。我们的分析表明，环境规制提供了比较优势的一个来源，但我们未能找到证据表明降低贸易壁垒会导致污染密集型产业集中于环境规制严格程度较弱的国家。原因在于，作为污染排放与减排的关键决定因素，环境规制在决定国际专业化分工方面的作用较弱。通过将环境规制严格程度与国际贸易的其他决定因素进行比较，我们识别出生产率和贸易成本是抑制环境规制在决定国际生产与贸易方面影响力的主要力量。此外，我们将内生环境政策纳入分析框架，并探讨了环境政策如何响应贸易自由化。我们允许策略性环境政策的存在，但发现其作为关税替代手段的作用相当有限。我们还评估了决定国际贸易对世界污染排放总体影响的各种力量。
Abstract
We develop and quantitatively evaluate a general equilibrium trade model with pollution as a byproduct of production to study the interactions between international trade, the environment, and environmental regulations. Our analysis suggests that environmental regulations provide a source of comparative advantage, but we fail to find evidence that reducing trade barriers causes pollution-intensive industries to concentrate in countries with weak environmental regulation stringency. The reason is that as a crucial determinant of pollution emissions and abatement, environmental regulations are weak in determining international specializations. By comparing environmental regulation stringency with other determinants of international trade, we identify productivity and trade costs as being the major forces that suppress the influence of environmental regulations on deciding international production and trade. Furthermore, we incorporate endogenous environmental policy into our framework and explore how environmental policy responds to trade liberalization. We allow for strategic environmental policy, but find its use as a substitute for tariffs to be quite limited. We also evaluate various forces that determine the overall impacts of international trade on worldwide pollution emissions.