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...

A growth-decomposition (scale, technique and composition effect) covering 62 countries and 7 manufacturing sectors over the 1990-2000 period shows that trade, through reallocations of activities across countries, has contributed to a 2-3 percent decrease in world SO2 emissions. However, when...

The amount of CO2 embedded in trade has substantially increased over the last decades. We study the trends and some drivers of the carbon content of trade over the period 1995-2009. Our main findings are the following. First, the mix of traded goods tends to have higher emission intensity than...

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...