Nicole Mathys

University of Neuchâtel, Economics, Department Member

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Waste taxes at work: Evidence from the canton of Vaud in Switzerland

Ecological Economics

Trade and Climate Changes: The Challenges Ahead (Policy Brief)

For a long time, trade and the environment have been odd bedfellows as environmentalists have cla... more For a long time, trade and the environment have been odd bedfellows as environmentalists have claimed that the interests of the trade community have trumped their concerns. In recognition of this, the launch of the Doha Round explicitly recognized fears that the gains from growth and globalization could be undermined by their environmental side-effects. First, globalization-induced increases in trade can magnify cross-border pollution. Second, improvements in technology make it increasingly easy to intensify the exploitation of natural resources, potentially exacerbating the depletion of natural capital.

A Gravity Analysis of The Pollution Content of Trade

The paper analyses the pollution content of imports for 16 different pollutants and more than 50 ... more The paper analyses the pollution content of imports for 16 different pollutants and more than 50 countries over the 1986-1996 period in a gravity framework. Average emission intensities are correlated with standard gravity variables, with dirty products more highly correlated with trade barriers (i.e transport costs) than clean products. Factor endowments and environmental policy motives for specialization in dirty products prove difficult to disentangle. Using CO2 emissions per dollar of GDP as our preferred proxy for environmental stringency reveals both a factor endowment and a pollution haven effect, the latter with a larger elasticity. Results provide the basis for a new decomposition of the pollution content of trade into the technique, composition and scale effects identified in the literature.

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1-26-2011 Energy Abundance , Trade and Industry Location

We study the effect of countries’ energy abundance on trade and sector activity, conditional on s... more We study the effect of countries’ energy abundance on trade and sector activity, conditional on sector’s energy intensity, using an unbalanced panel with 14 high-income countries from Europe, America and Asia, 10 broad sectors, and years 1970-1997. We find that (i) countries with large energy endowments have low energy prices, and are thus energy abundant both on micro and macro level. (ii) Energy abundant countries have a high level of energy embodied in exports relative to imports. (iii) Energy intensive sectors export from and (iv) have higher economic activity in energy abundant countries. (v) The trade and location effects increase with a sector’s exposure to international trade. In short, energy is a major driver for sector location through specialisation. We show that capital and energy are complements in the production function and use various controls in our analysis. The results give insights into delocalisation effects that may take place among rich countries with heterog...

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Measuring the pollution terms of trade with technique effects

The pollution terms of trade (PTT) index first introduced and estimated by Antweiler (1996) allow... more The pollution terms of trade (PTT) index first introduced and estimated by Antweiler (1996) allows to identify if trade-embodied emissions are on average larger in exports than in imports. His empirical results were based on the tradecomposition (between-sector) part of the PTT and revealed rather paradoxically that exports of rich countries were on average dirtier than their imports. Using a new database on SO2 manufacturing emissions that includes variation of emission intensities across countries, sectors and over time, this paper extends the earlier work by identifying two additional effects: the between-country and the technique effect. As it turns out, these two effects run opposite to the between-sector effect, and more than compensate it. Hence, the overall pattern is that high income countries tend to have lower PTT indices, meaning that their exports are cleaner than their imports, while in low income countries the reverse is observed.

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LCA of mobility solutions: approaches and findings—66th LCA forum, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, 30 August, 2017

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 2017

LCA of mobility solutions : approaches and findings—66th LCA forum, Swiss Federal Institute of Te... more

Unraveling the World Wide Pollution Haven Hypothesis

Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, 2010

This paper tackles the 'pollution haven' argument by estimating the pollution content of imports ... more This paper tackles the 'pollution haven' argument by estimating the pollution content of imports (PCI). The PCI is then decomposed into three components: (i) a 'deep' component (i.e. traditional variables unrelated to the environmental debate); (ii) a factor endowment component and (iii) a 'pollution haven' component reflecting the impact of differences in environmental policies. The estimation is carried out for 1987 for an extensive data set covering 10 pollutants, 48 countries and 79 ISIC 4-digit sectors. Decompositions based on cross-section econometric estimates suggest a significant pollution haven effect which increases the PCI of the North because of stricter environmental regulations in the North. At the same time, the factor endowment effect lowers the PCI of the North, as the North is relatively well-endowed in capital and pollution-intensive activities are capital intensive. On a global scale, because the bulk of trade is intra-regional with a high North-North share, these effects are small relative to the 'deep' determinants of the worldwide PCI. In sum, differences in factor endowments and environmental policies have only marginally affected the PCI of world trade at the end of the eighties.

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Identifying the worldwide pollution haven

Geographical Spread of Global Emissions: Within-country Inequalities Are Increasing

The major greenhouse gases, CO2 and CH4, are uniformly mixing, but spatial inequalities in emissi... more The major greenhouse gases, CO2 and CH4, are uniformly mixing, but spatial inequalities in emissions do matter in terms of both efficiency and equity of environmental policy formation and implementation. As the recent evidence has mainly focused on convergence issues between countries, this paper extends the empirical analysis by taking into account within-country inequalities in emissions of three major atmospheric pollutants: CO2, SO2 and CH4 over the 1970-2008 period. Using Theil-index decompositions, we show that within-country inequalities account for the bulk of global inequality, and tend to increase over the sample period, in contrast with diminishing between-country inequalities. An original extension to include differences across sectors reveals that between-sector inequality matters more than between-country inequality, and becomes the dominant source of global inequality at the end of the sample period in the CO2 and SO2 cases. A final exercise suggests that social tensi...

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The Rise and Fall of the West: a Geographical Perspective

by Nicole Mathys and jaime de Melo

This paper proposes a new representation of the worldwide distribution of human population and ec... more This paper proposes a new representation of the worldwide distribution of human population and economic activity over two millennia. Combining the Maddison and the G-Econ databases, it tracks the evolution of the world’s demographic and economic centers of gravity during the 1-2010 period. The distributional and temporal patterns that emerge are clear and contrasted, with a stable East-Asian predominance during the first eighteen centuries, followed by a boomerang-like westward shift during the last two centuries. New turning points are identified, suggesting that the reversal of the Western shift occurred as early as the 1920s in demographic terms and in the 1950s in economic ones. JEL classification: N10, O10 and R10

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Energy Research 2020+ in Switzerland

A Dynamic Model of Sectoral Agglomeration Effects

This note derives a theoretical model that justifies the dynamic specification used in empirical ... more This note derives a theoretical model that justifies the dynamic specification used in empirical works investigating the impact of agglomeration effects on regional industry-specific labour productivity. It extends the seminal multiregional framework of Ciccone (2002) to allow for sectoral disaggregation and a temporal dimension. As a result, present productivity becomes a function of past productivity and other contemporaneous and lagged control variables.

format_quoteA theoretical foundation for a dynamic equation linking productivity and agglomeration is proposed, addressing endogeneity and time effects.format_quote

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Fractional integration between energy use and GDP

This paper investigates the short and long run relationships between energy consumption and real ... more This paper investigates the short and long run relationships between energy consumption and real GDP in Switzerland. We apply cointegration and error correction models to data covering a long period, from 1950 to 2009, and distinguish between different energy sources. Our results show that there is a separate long run relationship from real GDP to energy consumption of heating oil, fuel and electricity. Conversely, we do not find any significant relationship from energy consumption towards GDP. Energy abatement policies are therefore not expected to have a negative impact on the growth of the Swiss economy.

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Back to 1820? Spatial distribution of GDP and CO2 Emissions

We construct the world's centers of gravity for human population, GDP and CO2 emissions by ta... more We construct the world's centers of gravity for human population, GDP and CO2 emissions by taking the best out of five recognized data sources covering the last two centuries. We also propose a more appropriate two-map representation of the location of the center of gravity, which abstracts from the usual distortions affecting the projection of a point within a three-dimensional sphere on a two-dimensional map. This allows for a more accurate interpretation of the underlying trends. We find a radical Western shift of GDP and CO2 emissions centers during the 19th century, in sharp contrast with the stability of the demographic center of gravity. Both GDP and emissions trends are reversed in the first half of the 20th century, after World War I for CO2 emissions, and after World War II for GDP. Since then, both centers are moving eastward at an accelerating speed. These patterns are consistent with the initial lead of Western countries starting the industrial revolution and the ad...

format_quoteThe center of gravity for CO2 emissions shifted dramatically over 200 years, initially concentrated in the UK, highlighting changing pollution patterns.format_quote

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Chancen und Auswirkungen einer CO2-Lenkungsabgabe auf Treibstoffe

der Senkung der CO2-Emissionen in der Schweiz erwiesen und erfordert deshalb besondere Aufmerksam... more der Senkung der CO2-Emissionen in der Schweiz erwiesen und erfordert deshalb besondere Aufmerksamkeit in der Politik. Rund ein Drittel der Treibhausgasemissionen in der Schweiz wird durch den Verkehr verursacht – den Flugverkehr nicht eingerechnet. Während die CO2-Emissionen aus Brennstoffen wie Öl und Gas seit 1990 markant zurückgegangen sind, sinken die Emissionen aus Treibstoffen, vor allem Benzin und Diesel, erst seit 2008 und nur sehr langsam, so dass die Emissionen 2018 immer noch höher waren als 1990. Das Ziel, die

A Global Compass for the Great Divergence: Emissions vs. Production Centers of Gravity 1820‐2008

The World Economy

Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence.

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A Gravity Analysis of The Pollution Content of Trade

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Trade and Climate Change Policies after the Crisis” chp. 23 in M. Haddad and Ben Sheperd eds

Trade, pollution, and the environment: New international evidence

... international evidence Jaime de Melo Jean-Marie Grether Nicole A. Mathys 28 November 2009 ...... more

CO2 embodied in trade: trends and fossil fuel drivers

Environmental Science and Pollution Research

The amount of CO2 embodied in trade has substantially increased over the last decades. We contrib... more The amount of CO2 embodied in trade has substantially increased over the last decades. We contribute to understanding the reasons for this evolution by studying the trends and some drivers of the carbon intensity of trade over the period 1995–2009 in 41 countries and 35 sectors. Our empirical analysis relies on the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) to compute embodied carbon emissions. Our main findings are the following. First, average emission intensity of traded goods is higher than average emission intensity of final demand. Second, relatively “dirty” countries tend to specialize in emission-intensive sectors. Third, the share of goods produced in emission-intensive countries is rising. Finally, we find that coal abundance (measured as fuel rent and controlling for reverse causality) leads both to a specialization in “dirty” sectors and to an increase in emissions per output when controlling for sector structure, which amounts to a fossil fuel endowment effect. These findings s...

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Nicole Mathys

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