TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ederington,Josh
AU  - Levinson,Arik
AU  - Minier,Jenny
TI  - Footloose and Pollution-Free
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9718
PY  - 2003
Y2  - May 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9718
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9718.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Josh Ederington
University of Kentucky
E-Mail: ederington@uky.edu

Arik Levinson
Department of Economics ICC 571
Georgetown University
3700 O St., NW
Washington, DC 20057
Tel: 202/687-5571
Fax: 202/687-6102
E-Mail: aml6@georgetown.edu
AB  - In numerous studies, economists have found little empirical evidence that environmental regulations affect trade flows. In this paper, we propose and test several common explanations for why the effect of environmental regulations on trade may be difficult to detect. We demonstrate that while most trade occurs among industrialized economies, environmental regulations have stronger effects on trade between industrialized and developing economies. We find that for most industries, pollution abatement costs are a small component of total costs, and are unrelated to trade flows. In addition, we show that those industries with the largest pollution abatement costs also happen to be the least geographically mobile, or  footloose.' After accounting for these distinctions, we measure a significant effect of pollution abatement costs on imports from developing countries, and in pollution-intensive, footloose industries.
ER  -