Nowhere has the divide between advocates and critics of globalization been more striking than in debates over free trade and the environment. And yet the literature on the subject is high on rhetoric and low on results. This book is the first to systematically investigate the subject using both economic theory and empirical analysis. Brian Copeland and Scott Taylor establish a powerful theoretical framework for examining the impact of international trade on local pollution levels, and use it to offer a uniquely integrated treatment of the links between economic growth, liberalized trade, and the environment. The results will surprise many. The authors set out the two leading theories linking international trade to environmental outcomes, develop the empirical implications, and examine their validity using data on measured sulfur dioxide concentrations from over 100 cities worldwide during the period from 1971 to 1986. The empirical results are provocative. For an average country in the sample, free trade is good for the environment. There is little evidence that developing countries will specialize in pollution-intensive products with further trade. In fact, the results suggest just the opposite: free trade will shift pollution-intensive goods production from poor countries with lax regulation to rich countries with tight regulation, thereby lowering world pollution. The results also suggest that pollution declines amid economic growth fueled by economy-wide technological progress but rises when growth is fueled by capital accumulation alone. Lucidly argued and authoritatively written, this book will provide students and researchers of international trade and environmental economics a more reliable way of thinking about this contentious issue, and the methodological tools with which to do so.

This book was initiated while the three major authors were at the Development Centre of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, working on its program on economic growth, trade, and sustainability. We wish to thank the OECD Development Centre for its support. The book was completed during summer 2001 at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University. We appreciate the resources and financial support CARD provided for publication of this work. Sandra Clarke provided technical editing of the manuscripts and oversaw the indexing of the book; Becky Olson prepared the camera-ready copy of the final manuscript. We thank them for their instrumental help in these last steps. Part of the work presented in this volume previously appeared in some form in journals. The analysis of Chile presented in Chapter 6 appeared as “Growth, Trade, Pollution and Natural-Resource Use in Chile. Evidence from an Economywide Model,” Agricultural Economics 19(1998): 87-97; and as “Trade Integration, Environmental Degradation, and Public Health in Chile: Assessing the Linkages,” Environment and Development Economics, in press. The work on Costa Rica and Indonesia summarised in Chapter 10 appeared as “Is There a Trade-off Between Trade Liberalisation and Pollution Abatement in Costa Rica? A Computable General Equilibrium Assessment,” Journal of Policy Modeling 20(1): 11-31; and as “The Environment and Welfare Implications of Trade and Tax Policy,” Journal of Development Economics 52(1997): 65-82.

In general, a reduction in trade barriers will affect the environment by expanding the scale of economic activity, by altering the composition of economic activity and by initiating a change in the techniques of production. We present empirical evidence to assess the relative magnitudes of these three effects as they apply to further trade liberalization in Mexico. We first use comparable measures of three air pollutants in a cross-section of urban areas located in 42 countries to study the relationship between air quality and economic growth. We find for two pollutants (sulphur dioxide and 'smoke') that concentrations increase with per capita GDP at low levels of national income, but decrease with GDP growth at higher levels of income. We then study the determinants of the industry pattern of US imports from Mexico and of value added by Mexico's maquiladora sector. We investigate whether the size of pollution abatement costs in US industry influences the pattern of international trade and investment. Finally, we use the results from a computable general equilibrium model to study the likely compositional effect of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on pollution in Mexico.

This book provides insight into the diverse aspects of the informal sector, its role in the context of unemployment, child labor, globalization and environment, as well as its multi-faceted interaction with the other sectors of the economy.

This open access book analyzes and seeks to consolidate the use of robust quantitative tools and qualitative methods for the design and assessment of energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines energy and climate policy performance and associated risks, as well as public acceptance and portfolio analysis in climate policy, and presents methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of flexible policy implementation as well as new framings for business and market actors. In turn, it discusses the development of alternative policy pathways and the identification of optimal switching points, drawing on concrete examples to do so. Lastly, it discusses climate change mitigation policies’ implications for the agricultural, food, building, transportation, service and manufacturing sectors.

Global value chains (GVCs) powered the surge of international trade after 1990 and now account for almost half of all trade. This shift enabled an unprecedented economic convergence: poor countries grew rapidly and began to catch up with richer countries. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, however, the growth of trade has been sluggish and the expansion of GVCs has stalled. Meanwhile, serious threats have emerged to the model of trade-led growth. New technologies could draw production closer to the consumer and reduce the demand for labor. And trade conflicts among large countries could lead to a retrenchment or a segmentation of GVCs. World Development Report 2020: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains examines whether there is still a path to development through GVCs and trade. It concludes that technological change is, at this stage, more a boon than a curse. GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty provided that developing countries implement deeper reforms to promote GVC participation; industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies; and all countries revive multilateral cooperation.