Trade liberalisation and the environment: The case of the Uruguay round

This paper estimates the impact of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, in terms of three effects, on five air pollutants for a number of countries/ regions. The five pollutants are nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, suspended particulate matter and carbon dioxide. In this paper the scale and technique effect are combined into one effect, hereafter referred to as the combined scale and technique effect. Where the composition effect and the combined scale and technique effect are estimated for a pollutant, these are aggregated to provide the total impact of the Uruguay Round on that pollutant. From these estimates, the likely monetary cost associated with a change in pollution emissions is also estimated. The remainder of the paper is organised as follows: Section 2 sets out the framework which has been adopted to examine the relationship between trade liberalisation and the environment; Section 3 provides results and Section 4 concludes the paper.