Impact of Free Trade Agreements on the Embodied Carbon Emissions in GVCs:An Empirical Study of the Environmental Costs of Trade Agreements
This paper uses the input-output data between countries from 2000 to 2014 to empiri-cally explore how free trade agreements(FTAs)affect the embodied carbon emissions in the val-ue chain trade of member countries,to consider the environmental costs of FTAs.This paper finds that FTAs lead to an increase in the embodied carbon emissions of value chain trade.This effect is stronger than the impact of FTAs on the embodied carbon emissions of final goods trade,and there are heterogeneous impacts in different value chain routes.On the one hand,FTAs lead to an increase in emissions and environmental costs through the scale effect;on the other hand,FTAs reduce the emission intensity through the technical effect,which reduce the unit environ-mental cost.But the scale effect plays a leading role.Further analysis shows that the promotion of FTAs on carbon emissions is driven by regional agreements,and has a stronger impact on de-veloped members,North-North trade,and the export of the South to the North.
free trade agreementsembodied carbon emissions in tradeglobal value chains