International Trade

The pursuit of sustainable development requires balancing the objectives of FDI, Trade, economic growth and environmental protection. Achieving a balance between these often-conflicting priorities is difficult enough at the national level, where competing interests are at least grounded in a common environmental, social and economic context. At the international level, where different countries have vastly different circumstances and priorities, it is significantly harder. One of the many ways in which this challenge manifests itself in the real world is in the conflict between the desire to promote trade by reducing non-tariff barriers and the desire to protect the environment and health through the use of technical regulations and standards.   As competition becomes more global, people are concerned that relatively lenient environmental regulation and lax enforcement in developing countries give them a comparative advantage in pollution intensive goods. Lowering trade barrier may encourage a relocation of polluting industries from countries with strict environmental policy to those with lenient policy. These shifts may increase global pollution, as countries become reluctant to tighten environmental regulations due of their concerns over comparative advantage in international trade. Therefore, trade and FDI may encourage a relocation of polluting industries from countries with strict environmental policy to those with less stringent policy. We call this a pollution haven effect. The pattern of trade depends on which of these effects is stronger. The aim of this paper is to test the validation of the hypothesis of the pollution haven effect on water created by the different industries in the selected countries of Europe and Asia.   Overall, our results show that trade liberalization decreases the BOD emission crated by chemical, food, metal, paper and pulp, textile, wood and other industries but it increases this emission crated by clay and glass industry in the selected EU-Asian countries. JEL Classification : Q51, Q56.

Trade liberalization has induced volatility in the prices of oilseeds. Oilseeds such as rapeseed and mustard, which are rich in vitamins, minerals, and the staple ingredients in many food items. This paper analyzed the international and domestic prices of rapeseed and mustard for India. The analysis showed that India was a net exporter of rapeseed and mustard oilseeds and has experienced lower price volatility for these crops. On the other hand, in terms of processed rapeseed and mustard oil, India has been a net importer. As such it is unable to influence the prices of these products and has greater price volatility in the domestic market. The present study examined these issues in-depth in post-trade liberalization and India’s accession into the World Trade Organization and commitments under the Agreement in Agriculture. The statistical technique used for analysis was the run test and the nominal protection coefficients. Therefore, the present study was carried out to analyze the fluctuations in international and domestic prices of rapeseed and mustard crops after trade liberalization and its impact on the competitiveness of a crop. JEL Classification: D40, F14,O53

Signing a preferential trade agreement between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has created a suitable context for the expansion of trade interactions between the countries of this region. With respect to this context, this paper examines food trade potentials between Iran and Russia as two neighbors with significant economies. Product codes are chosen from the 21 categories of the integrated tariff system based on the global definition of food. Data analysis is based on four trade criteria including the Allen cosine measure, the Revealed Comparative Advantage measure, the simple estimate of trade potential measure, and the Drysdale index over the years 2001–2017. These indices illustrate that Iran and Russia have high trade capacities for some items in certain food groups, and that they can facilitate the process of economic integration through reinforcing regional interactions and intra-region trade expansion, while safeguarding national interests and improving national security. The paper concludes that Iran’s food exports to Russia in a particular set of commodity codes enjoy the potential of expansion due to structural similarities between the countries’ food exports, the increasing trend of Iran’s food export potential to Russia, the increasing advantage of these commodity codes in Iran’s export to the world, and the increasing trade expansion opportunities from Iran to Russia.