Trade openness and pollutant emissions in China: the role of capital abundance and income
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Trade openness and pollutant emissions in China: the role of capital abundance and income Xin Peng 1 & Yue Pu 2 Received: 11 February 2020 / Accepted: 25 June 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The role of capital abundance and income in the trade openness and environmental quality debate has long been a concern among academic researchers. The researchers of this paper empirically analyze the effects of trade and other core factors on emissions of four pollutants (SO2, SM, VOC, and NHX), using panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2000 to 2015. Then the scale, composition, technique, and trade elasticities are calculated, based on lower and higher levels of capital abundance and relative income. Furthermore, the researchers calculate the province-specific trade elasticities and analyze the relationship between the province-specific trade elasticities and capital abundance and relative income, respectively. They find a negative effect of trade openness on pollutant emissions in China. The analysis of the elasticities in terms of China’s pollutant emissions shows that the scale and composition elasticities are positive, while technique and trade elasticities are negative. Moreover, provinces with lower capital abundance tend to have more negative trade elasticities, while provinces with higher relative income tend to have more negative trade elasticities. The result implies that both pollution haven effect and factor abundance effect may be at work in Chinese provinces, but the dominance of one effect over the other depends on a province’s level of capital abundance and income. Keywords Trade openness . Pollutant emissions . Capital abundance . Income . Elasticity
Introduction According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s import and export trade reached 24,584.9 billion yuan in 2015, ranking second in the world. Since China’s reform and opening up in 1978, the rapid development of its foreign trade has greatly promoted its economic growth, technological progress, and social welfare improvement. However, reports on environmental pollution in China have endlessly emerged. For exam-
Responsible editor: Nicholas Apergis * Xin Peng [email protected] Yue Pu [email protected] 1
College of Economics, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China
2
School of International Business, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China
ple, the successive emergence of haze weather in various cities throughout China shows that the air quality has obviously been worsen; the poisonous fish event of Luo Jia Lake indicates that the water pollution problems are continuously aggravated in China; due to serious environmental pollution, one-third of the land in China has been contaminated by acid rain, and more than 300 million farmers do not have clean water to drink. According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China, China’s emissions of sulfur
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