Search

Abstract: We use data from the World Input‐Output Database to fit a closed multiregional input–output model in order to estimate the size of spillover effects of Germany's final demand on GDP, employment and the trade balance in Southern European countries. We find that spillover effects are rather small. Germany alone will hardly make a significant contribution to the external adjustment process in the European South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Emission offshoring does not account for emission reductions in advanced economies. • Most advanced economies onshore more carbon emissions than they offshore emissions. • The USA net offshores emissions while China net onshores emissions. • Per-capita income does not predict which country specializes in green products. International trade and emission offshoring can reduce a country's domestic carbon dioxide emissions, helping it to reach emission reduction targets set under the prevailing territorial climate policy frameworks. We ask what is the net contribution of trade to national production-based emissions. Existing metrics (consumption-based emissions and the technology-adjusted balance of emissions embodied in trade) do not answer this question. Based on global multi-regional input-output tables and the domestic technology assumption, we calculate net emission onshoring as the difference between the emissions embodied in gross exports (onshoring) and the emissions avoided by gross imports (offshoring) for 43 countries between 2000–2014. We find that the USA offshores emissions and China onshores emissions; the aggregate trade balance explains this result while the trade composition plays a negligible role in either country. In general there is no cross-country relationship between net offshoring and per-capita income, and neither one between trade specialization in emission-intensive products and per-capita income. The developed countries' absolute decoupling of economic growth and production-based emissions since 2000 is "genuine" in the sense that it reflects domestic economic developments and is not owed to emission offshoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]