We construct the world’s centers of gravity for human population, GDP and CO2 emissions by taking the best out of five recognized data sources covering the last two centuries. On the basis of a novel distorsion-free representation of these centers of gravity, we find a radical Western shift of...

The major greenhouse gases, CO2 and CH4, are uniformly mixing, but spatial inequalities in emissions do matter in terms of both efficiency and equity of environmental policy formation and implementation. As the recent evidence has mainly focused on convergence issues between countries, this...

We construct the world's centers of gravity for human population, GDP and CO2 emissions by taking the best out of five recognized data sources covering the last two centuries. We also propose a more appropriate two-map representation of the location of the center of gravity, which abstracts from...

This paper tackles the pollution haven argument by estimating the pollution content of imports (PCI). The PCI is then decomposed into three components: (i) a deep component (i.e. traditional variables unrelated to the environmental debate); (ii) a factor endowment component and (iii) a pollution...

This paper contributes to the debate on the existence of pollution haven effects by systematically measuring the pollution content of trade (measured by the polluction content of imports (PCI)) and decomposing it into three components: a 'deep' (i.e. unrelated to the environmental debate)...

Combining unique data bases on emissions with sectoral output and employment data, we study the sources of the fall in world-wide SO2 emissions and estimate the impact of trade on emissions. Contrarily to concerns raised by environmentalists, an emission-decomposition exercise shows that scale...

The pollution terms of trade (PTT) index first introduced and estimated by Antweiler (1996) allows to identify if trade-embodied emissions are on average larger in exports than in imports. His empirical results were based on the tradecomposition (between-sector) part of the PTT and revealed...

This paper tackles the "pollution haven" argument by estimating the pollution content of imports (PCI). The PCI is then decomposed into three components:(i) a "deep" component (i.e. traditional variables unrelated to the environmental debate); (ii) a factor endowment component and (iii) a...

One of the biggest obstacles in cross-country empirical research in the area of environmental economics is the absence of a sound indicator quantifying environmental policy stringency. A variety of indicators have been proposed and are currently used. Almost none of them rely on an explicitly...