This paper tackles the “pollution haven” argument by estimating the pollution content of imports (PCI). The PCI is then decomposed into three components: (i) a “deep” component (i.e. traditional variables unrelated to the environmental debate); (ii) a factor endowment component and (iii)...

We study the effect of countries’ energy abundance on trade and sector activity, conditional on sector’s energy intensity, using an unbalanced panel with 14 high-income countries from Europe, America and Asia, 10 broad sectors, and years 1970-1997. We find that (i) countries with large...

In numerous studies, economists have found little empirical evidence that environmental regulations affect trade flows. In this paper, we propose and test several common explanations for why the effect of environmental regulations on trade may be difficult to detect. We demonstrate that while...

This paper studies the relevance of strategic trade effects in the environmental policy for the European electricity sector. The production, investment and trade of electricity are modelled for four European countries. Three market regimes are distinguished: perfect competition, price regulation...

This paper contributes to the debate on the existence of pollution haven effects by systematically measuring the pollution content of trade (measured by the polluction content of imports (PCI)) and decomposing it into three components: a ‘deep’ (i.e. unrelated to the environmental debate)...