Racing to the Bottom?

Racing to the Bottom? PDF Author: David Wheeler
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Air
Languages : en
Pages : 30

Get Book Here

Book Description
Critics of free trade have raised the specter of a "race to the bottom" in which environmental standards collapse because polluters threaten to relocate to "pollution havens" in the developing world. The flaw in the race-to-the-bottom model is that its basic assumptions misrepresent the political economy of pollution control in developing countries

Racing to the Bottom?

Racing to the Bottom? PDF Author: David Wheeler
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Air
Languages : en
Pages : 30

Get Book Here

Book Description
Critics of free trade have raised the specter of a "race to the bottom" in which environmental standards collapse because polluters threaten to relocate to "pollution havens" in the developing world. The flaw in the race-to-the-bottom model is that its basic assumptions misrepresent the political economy of pollution control in developing countries

Racing to the Bottom? Foreign Investment and Air Pollution in Developing Countries

Racing to the Bottom? Foreign Investment and Air Pollution in Developing Countries PDF Author: David Wheeler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26

Get Book Here

Book Description
Critics of free trade have raised the specter of a race to the bottom, in which environmental standards collapse because polluters threaten to relocate to pollution havens in the developing world. The flaw in the race-to-the-bottom model is that its basic assumptions misrepresent the political economy of pollution control in developing countries.Critics of free trade have raised the specter of a race to the bottom, in which environmental standards collapse because polluters threaten to relocate to pollution havens in the developing world. Proponents of this view advocate high, globally uniform standards enforced by punitive trade measures that neutralize the cost advantage of would-be pollution havens. To test the race-to-the-bottom model, Wheeler analyzes recent air quality trends in the United States and in Brazil, China, and Mexico, the three largest recipients of foreign investment in the developing world.The evidence clearly contradicts the model's central prediction. The most dangerous form of air pollution - suspended particulate matter - has actually declined in major cities in all four countries during the era of globalization.Citing recent research, Wheeler argues that the race-to-the-bottom model is flawed because its basic assumptions misrepresent the political economy of pollution control in developing countries.He proposes a more realistic model, in which low-income societies serve their own long-run interests by reducing pollution. He concludes with recommendations for international assistance measures that can improve environmental quality without counterproductive enforcement of uniform standards and trade sanctions.This paper - a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the economics of pollution control in developing countries. Please contact David Wheeler, room MC2-529, telephone 202-473-3401, fax 202-522-3230, email address [email protected].

Moving to Greener Pastures?

Moving to Greener Pastures? PDF Author: Gunnar S. Eskeland
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Contaminacion ambiental
Languages : en
Pages : 48

Get Book Here

Book Description


Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct Investment

Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct Investment PDF Author: Beata K. Smarzynska Javorcik
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Air quality management
Languages : en
Pages : 36

Get Book Here

Book Description
The "pollution haven" hypothesis states that multinational firms, particularly those in highly polluting industries, relocate to countries with weak environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, Smarzynska and Wei find only weak evidence in its favor.

Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct Investment

Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct Investment PDF Author: Shang-Jin Wei
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
September 2001 The "pollution haven" hypothesis states that multinational firms, particularly those in highly polluting industries, relocate to countries with weak environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, Smarzynska and Wei find only weak evidence in its favor. The "pollution haven" hypothesis refers to the possibility that multinational firms, particularly those engaged in highly polluting activities, relocate to countries with weaker environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, there is little evidence to support it. Smarzynska and Wei identify four obstacles that may have impeded researchers' ability to find evidence in favor of the "pollution haven" hypothesis: * The possibility that some features of host countries, such as bureaucratic corruption, may deter inward foreign direct investment and also be positively correlated with lax environmental standards. Omitting this information in statistical analyses may produce misleading results. * The possibility that country- or industry-level data, typically used in the literature, may have masked the effect at the firm level. * Difficulties associated with measuring environmental standards of the host countries. * Difficulties associated with measuring the pollution intensity of the multinational firms. The authors attempt to surmount these obstacles by explicitly taking into account corruption in host countries and using a firm-level data set on investment projects in 24 transition economies. With these improvements, the authors find some support for the "pollution haven" hypothesis, but evidence is still weak and does not survive numerous robustness checks. This paper--a product of Trade, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to study the effects of foreign direct investment on developing countries. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Corruption, Pollution, and Location of International Capital Flows." The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].

Does Foreign Direct Investment Harm the Host Country's Environment? Evidence from China

Does Foreign Direct Investment Harm the Host Country's Environment? Evidence from China PDF Author: Feng Helen Liang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
As more manufacturing jobs are moved to the developing countries, policy makers become concerned with the environmental consequence. Relatively lenient environmental policies in the developing countries may give them a comparative advantage in pollution intensive goods, and foreign direct investment might harm the host country's environment. This study examines the relationship between the inflows of foreign direct investment and local air pollution in China and suggests that the opposite might be true. Trade and foreign direct investment could have beneficial effect on a developing country's environment when the multinationals crowd out inefficient local firms, change the industrial composition, and bring better technology and improve productivity and energy efficiency. Using city level data on air pollution, industry composition, foreign direct investment, and other social economic factors, this study finds a negative correlation between foreign direct investment and air pollution, suggesting that the overall effect of foreign direct investment may be beneficial to the environment.

Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct Investment

Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct Investment PDF Author: Beata Smarzynska Javorcik
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The "pollution haven" hypothesis states that multinational firms, particularly those in highly polluting industries, relocate to countries with weak environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, Smarzynska and Wei find only weak evidence in its favor. The "pollution haven" hypothesis refers to the possibility that multinational firms, particularly those engaged in highly polluting activities, relocate to countries with weaker environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, there is little evidence to support it. Smarzynska and Wei identify four obstacles that may have impeded researchers' ability to find evidence in favor of the "pollution haven" hypothesis: - The possibility that some features of host countries, such as bureaucratic corruption, may deter inward foreign direct investment and also be positively correlated with lax environmental standards. Omitting this information in statistical analyses may produce misleading results. - The possibility that country- or industry-level data, typically used in the literature, may have masked the effect at the firm level. - Difficulties associated with measuring environmental standards of the host countries. - Difficulties associated with measuring the pollution intensity of the multinational firms. The authors attempt to surmount these obstacles by explicitly taking into account corruption in host countries and using a firm-level data set on investment projects in 24 transition economies. With these improvements, the authors find some support for the "pollution haven" hypothesis, but evidence is still weak and does not survive numerous robustness checks. This paper - a product of Trade, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the effects of foreign direct investment on developing countries. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Corruption, Pollution, and Location of International Capital Flows."

Greening Industry

Greening Industry PDF Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780195211276
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description
Accompanying CD-ROM contains background and reference material for the text, including the text itself, as well as a slightly modified version of the World Bank's New ideas for pollution regulation (NIPR) web site, current as of 9/29/99. CD-ROM also includes Netscape, Adobe Acrobat, and Real Media audio/video player.

Informal Regulation of Industrial Pollution in Developing Countries

Informal Regulation of Industrial Pollution in Developing Countries PDF Author: Sheoli Pargal
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Contaminacion - Indonesia
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Get Book Here

Book Description


Trade and the Environment

Trade and the Environment PDF Author: Brian R. Copeland
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400850703
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.