Title: Do emissions implied in net export validate the pollution haven conjecture? Analysis of G7 and BRICS countries

Authors: Suvajit Banerjee; Muntasir Murshed

Addresses: Department of Economics and Politics, Vidya Bhavana, Visva Bharati University, Bolpur, West Bengal, India ' School of Business and Economics, North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract: This study attempts to relook at the pollution haven hypothesis for the G7 and BRICS countries. The empirical analysis begins by detecting the cross-sectional dependence among the country panels for the period 2005-2015 and applies the second-generation unit-root and Westerlund-Edgerton LM bootstrap cointegration tests to precisely determine the long-run equilibrium relationship between emissions embodied in net export and the real GDP, FDI, trade openness, energy consumption and financial development. The result shows a 1% increase in the real GDP and the FDI increasing the emission variable for the BRICS countries by 0.210% and 0.215% respectively, however, for the G7 countries, reducing the emission variable by 0.169% and 0.038% respectively. These findings corroborate the principles of the pollution haven hypothesis, labelling the BRICS countries as pollution haven and adding new argument to restructure the mitigation obligations for the giant emitters.

Keywords: pollution haven hypothesis; PHH; embodied emissions in net export; BRICS; G7; cross-sectional dependency; Westerlund-Edgerton LM bootstrap cointegration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSE.2020.111539

International Journal of Sustainable Economy, 2020 Vol.12 No.3, pp.297 - 319

Received: 27 May 2020
Accepted: 04 Sep 2020
Published online: 30 Nov 2020 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article