Essays on interaction of multilateral environmental agreements and international trade

This thesis studies the interaction between the environmental regulations/ agreements and international trade. I investigate and verify pollution haven hypothesis with panel regression with industries and country level data. The pollution haven hypothesis states that stringent environmental policies may drive the dirty industries to the countries with less stringent regulations. This paper verifies the pollution haven hypothesis from three aspects. Imports will increase for European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) members for dirty industries while exports decrease. Both the inward and outward foreign direct investments of dirty industries decrease for EU ETS countries. In the last chapter, I consider all types of multilateral environmental agreements and show that the presences of multilateral environmental agreements decrease countries total trade volume.Ph.D