Structural Change and the Environment

The objective of this chapter is to evaluate the contribution of structural change to production and consumption patterns with respect to sustainability analysis, with specific reference to sustainable production and consumption issues. In the face of delocalization processes and value chain restructuring, the analysis of sustainable development should instead provide both consumption and production dimensions. In the empirical analysis, the authors consider four measures of emission intensity: consumption-based emissions, consumption-based emissions due to structural change, production-based emissions, and production-based emissions due to structural change. The empirical results suggest a moderate contribution of structural change to decreases in overall emissions.