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Pollution Havens and the Trade in Toxic Chemicals: Evidence from U.S. Trade Flows

June 2010

Written by: John Tang

Working Paper Number:

CES-10-12

Abstract

Does increased environmental protection decrease the emission of pollutants or merely displace them? Using newly available trade data, this study examines the flows of a panel of chemicals designated as toxic by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Estimates from a differences-in-differences model indicate a significant increase in net imports when a chemical is listed on TRI, which suggests production offshoring. Furthermore, I find that increased imports due to this 'pollution haven effect' are sourced disproportionately from poorer countries, which are likely to have lower environmental protection standards. At the same time, I observe the bulk of American trade in toxic chemicals occurs with other wealthy countries, which may be attributed to the capital intensity of chemical production.

Document Tags and Keywords

Keywords Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant keywords.

By analyzing the content of working papers, KeyBERT identifies terms and phrases that capture the essence of the text, highlighting the most significant topics and trends. This approach not only enhances searchability but provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords.
:
import, export, commodity, tariff, exporter, regulation, regulatory, emission, pollution, epa, environmental, pollutant, chemical, polluting, polluting industries, concentration, custom

Tags Tags are automatically generated using a pretrained language model from spaCy, which excels at several tasks, including entity tagging.

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:
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Toxics Release Inventory, Environmental Protection Agency, North American Free Trade Agreement, Harmonized System, State Energy Data System, Customs and Border Protection

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