Dr Zheng Wang’s single-authored paper, “Blame the Foreigners? Exports and Dioxide Emissions in China”, has been published by Environmental and Resource Economics, the official journal of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
The full text of the paper can be accessed here:
Disentangling the intertwined relationship between international trade and pollution has always been difficult for researchers and policy makers due to two-way causality and the simultaneous play of many working mechanisms. In this paper, Dr Zheng Wang gives a systematic estimation and analysis of the causal impact of international trade on air pollution in China. In doing so, he uses an instrumental variable approach to isolate the impact of trade on SO2 emissions from many confounding influencing channels. This paper offers the first systematic and scientific overhaul of this issue in the context of China, the largest exporter and a top SO2 emitter in the world.