Trade Liberalisation, Economic Growth and the Environment

Concern with the impact of economic growth on the environment goes back at least to the early 1970s. Worries about the environmental impacts of trade liberalisation are more recent. This book considers both topics in a single analytical framework. The topics overlap because trade liberalisation is usually taken to be a major stimulus to economic growth, but there are other possible impacts of trade liberalisation on the environment, which this book identifies as limitations on environmental regulations, competitive pressures on environmental standards, and a prohibition on trade restrictions for environmental purposes. However, seeking to give space to such concerns within the international trading system runs the obvious risk of commercial protectionism being introduced under the guise (spurious or otherwise) of environmental protection, and of countries seeking to impose their own environmental standards on other countries in inappropriate ways. The book examines these issues in some detail, with clarity and balanced discussion, but without generating any really new insights. Where its novelty arises is in its quantitative revisiting of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis and in its application of this hypothesis to the predicted outcomes of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations

CLARITY · Economic growth · Economics · Free trade · International economics · International trade · Kuznets Curve · Liberalization · Market economy · Negotiation · Political science · Protectionism · Trade barrier · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Global trade and economics · Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy