Trade Liberalization and the Environment: Carbon Dioxide for 1960-1999

This paper examines the empirical question of whether free trade is harmful or beneficial for the environment. Using a comprehensive panel data for 63 developed and developing countries over 1960ÂE999, the result for CO2 suggests further trade liberalization will increase the emissions with the elasticity of 0.579. In my best knowledge, this is the first study that estimates the overall effects of trade liberalization to the environment.Carbon dioxide

EVALUATION AND POLICY ANALYSIS OF JAPANESE FORESTRY

This study evaluates efficiency of forest management in Japan. Our results show that efficiency of forest management decreases over 25 years period from 1975-2000 on average. The study indicates a substantial variation in efficiency across prefectures with a potential for output saving in the range of forty percent on average. Our econometric results seem to support the hypothesis that government subsidies had an adverse effect on economic performance of forestry sector. More subsidized prefectures were found to exhibit statistically significantly lower levels of efficiency.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Testing Increasing Returns to Pollution Abatement in Pesticides

According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, economic growth and the reduction of environmental degradation are compatible goals. An inverted U-shaped relationship between economic performance and environmental pollution suggests that, empirically, an economy is associated with smaller levels of pollution after some threshold income point. One potential explanation for the empirical evidence of an EKC is increasing returns to pollution abatement, where the abatement efficiency rises with an increase in the scale of abatement. Doubling the clean-up efforts more than doubles the abatement of pollution. As this efficiency gain makes abatement less expensive, pollution might fall as more abatement is undertaken. This study tests the hypothesis that there are increasing returns to abating pollution. Empirical evidence on environmental risks in the US agricultural sector since 1970 support the existence of increasing returns. In addition, I estimate the productivity of pollution abatement using refined empirical productivity measurement methods and explicitly control the level of technology. The results show the importance of including an environmental productivity variable in the EKC framework.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Unit root cycles in the US unemployment rate

The annual structure of the U.S. unemployment rate is examined in this article by means of new statistical techniques developed by Robinson (1994), which permit us to test unit root cycles in raw time series. The tests have standard null and local limit distributions and unlike other procedures, they allow us to determine the number of periods per cycle. The results show that the cycles in the U.S. unemployment seem to occur approximately every four or five years.Unemployment Unit root cycles.

Determinants of Trade in Recyclable Wastes between Developing and Developed Countries

This paper examines the trade volume of recyclable wastes. In particular, we analyze the trade from developed countries to developing countries. The reason is that, when a recycling process is separated from the production process of final goods or/and the consumption process, it would be located in the labor-abundant (i.e., less developed developing) countries. Then, the environmental and health problems might become serious in developing countries. The relationship between the wages and the volume of imports is our focus. We demonstrate that, the higher the wage/per capita income of a developing country, the more recyclable wastes it imports. This implies that there is no evidence for a pollution haven in the sense that the dirty recycling sectors expand in the less developed developing countries more rapidly than the more developed developing countries. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility that the trade restriction for reducing environmental damage is accompanied by a significant loss in efficiency.trade and recycling, recyclable wastes, gravity model

Tests on price linkage between the U.S. and Japanese gold and silver futures markets

We tested the price linkage, the law of one price (LOP) condition, and the causality of the price linkage between the U.S. and Japanese gold and silver futures markets with consideration of structural breaks in the price series. The LOP condition did not hold for both the gold and silver markets when structural breaks were not considered but it sustained in some periods when it was tested for the break periods. We found from the causality test that the price linkage between the U.S. and Japanese gold and silver futures markets were led by the U.S. market.gold futures market, silver futures market, cointegration, law of one price, causality test

Linkage among the U.S. Energy Futures Markets

This study tests the price linkage among the U.S. major energy sources, considering structural breaks in time series. We use the Johansen cointegration method and find that only weak linkage sustains among the NYMEX WTI crude oil, Brent crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, coal, natural gas, uranium, and ethanol futures prices. Our tests reveal that the uranium and ethanol futures prices have very weak linkage with other U.S. major energy source prices. This indicates that the U.S. energy market is still at a stage where none of the probable alternative energy source markets are playing the role as a substitute or a complement market for the fossil fuel energy markets and that the U.S. major energy source markets are not integrated as one primary energy market.futures market; structural breaks; Johansen cointegration method

The Effect of Trade Openness on Deforestation: Empirical Analysis for 142 Countries

This study explores the effect of trade openness on deforestation. Previous studies do not find a clear effect of trade openness on deforestation. We use updated data on the annual rate of deforestation for 142 countries from 1990 to 2003, treat trade and income as endogenous, and take into consideration an adjustment process by applying a dynamic model. We find that an increase in trade openness increases deforestation for non-OECD countries while slowing down deforestation for OECD countries. There is a possibility that both capital-labor and environmental-regulation effects have a negative impact on deforestation in developing countries, whereas the opposite holds in developed countries.Trade Openness; Environment; Comparative Advantage; Deforestation

Determinants of Trade in Recyclable Wastes between Developing and Developed Countries

This paper examines the trade volume of recyclable wastes. In particular, we analyze the trade from developed countries to developing countries. The reason is that, when a recycling process is separated from the production process of final goods or/and the consumption process, it would be located in the labor-abundant (i.e., less developed developing) countries. Then, the environmental and health problems might become serious in developing countries. The relationship between the wages and the volume of imports is our focus. We demonstrate that, the higher the wage/per capita income of a developing country, the more recyclable wastes it imports. This implies that there is no evidence for a pollution haven in the sense that the dirty recycling sectors expand in the less developed developing countries more rapidly than the more developed developing countries. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility that the trade restriction for reducing environmental damage is accompanied by a significant loss in efficiency.trade and recycling, recyclable wastes, gravity model