Good for business, not so much for the environment? Entry into importing and the energy intensity of Indian plants
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11911285 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Micehele Delera (United Nations Industrial Development Organization, corresponding author), Michele Delera, Nanditha Mathew (0000-0002-2781-8115, Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Tania Treibich (0000-0002-9679-1905, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 204 |
| Pages | 107412-107412 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | REPORT |
| Venue | World Development (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0305-750X • E-ISSN: 1873-5991 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.worlddev.2026.107412 |
| OpenAlex | W4409036216 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 41 |
The global fragmentation of production has important implications for the environment. As emerging economies increase their participation in trade, scale effects increase environmental impacts worldwide. Yet at the same time, access to international markets might help offset these impacts by increasing the efficiency of production. Existing literature suggests that trading firms tend to be more energy efficient than non-traders. However, this literature does not take into account the effect of firms’ product baskets. In this paper, we leverage a rich plantand product-level database from India to investigate the effects of importing on plant-level environmental outcomes. We first construct a measure of energy efficiency that is net of effects arising from plants’ product baskets. We then use an event study set up to compare outcomes between importers and future importers at the time of their entry into import markets. Our design takes advantage of plants’ staggered entry into importing to address issues of selection. Our findings suggest that after they start importing, plants experience increases in their energy intensity. Plants which start importing also grow larger and more productive, and diversify their product baskets. Our results suggest that access to international markets leads to gains in scale and productivity, but not in environmental performance. This finding suggests that there is an environmental cost to learning and product diversification
Agricultural economics · Business · Commerce · Economics · Energy (signal processing · Energy intensity · Industrial organization · Intensity (physics · Natural resource economics · Optics · Physics · Statistics · Economic and Technological Innovation · Global trade and economics · Indian Economic and Social Development · Mathematics
Plants and Productivity in International Trade
Imported Intermediate Inputs and Domestic Product Growth
Trade Liberalization, Intermediate Inputs, and Productivity
Tracing CO2 emissions in global value chains
The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity
Are exporters more environmentally friendly? A re‐appraisal that uses China’s micro‐data
Trade Liberalization and Firm Productivity
Upgrading, Interactive Learning, and Innovation Systems in Value Chain Interventions
Energy efficiency gains from importing intermediate inputs
Does the use of imported intermediates increase productivity? Plant-level evidence
What you import matters for productivity growth
Foreign demand, developing country exports, and CO2 emissions
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |