Investigating the pollution content of trade flows and the importance of 'environmental trade balances' in addressing the problem of climate change

Turner, Karen (2017). Investigating the pollution content of trade flows and the importance of 'environmental trade balances' in addressing the problem of climate change. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: Economic and Social Research Council. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-850527

Data description (abstract)

A crucial issue in addressing the problem of climate change is the impact of trade flows on any one country's domestic emissions generation (what governments are responsible for reducing under the Kyoto Protocol). Moreover, since human consumption decisions are commonly considered to lie at the heart of climate change problems, attention is increasingly turning to accounting measures such as carbon footprints, which measure emissions produced globally to meet local consumption demand. In response to this, it has become increasingly common to use appropriately augmented input-output accounts (produced as a component of national accounts in most industrialised countries) to measure emissions under different accounting principles and to estimate 'trade balances' in emissions in a multi-sector, multi-region context. The purpose of this Fellowship is to facilitate the application of such techniques at a sub-national regional level (with applications for the UK and US) and to develop appropriate modelling frameworks to analyse the impacts of changes in policy and other disturbances on pollution trade balances. This will involve application and development of inter-regional computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling techniques and collaboration with a number of data providers and other researchers in the fields of input-output analysis, economic modelling, regional and environmental science.

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