Trade and Environment: The Regulatory Controversy and a Theoretical and Empirical Assessment of Unilateral Environmental Action(Contributions to Economics)

Even though the interlinkage between trade and environment is obvious and important, it has been acknowledged as such only recently by the world community. Yet it is far from being truly addressed, as is indicated by the negotiations up to the Uruguay Round Final Act, signed in April 1994, as the most current example. Mankind remains faced with the crucial need of addressing this interlinkage -the objective to which this report is devoted. My own growing interest in this subject and the choice to work on and publish this report, which has been defended as my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Vienna, has had a long personal history. Ultimately it was made possible by important teachers of mine -from primary and high school up to universities -, by colleagues and friends, but certainly also by my family -as each of them answered my questions and communicated their own ideas. Along the path of research it was only the specific support and inspiration of a large number of people in various different ways that made it possible for the report to now be in front of you in the current form.

Table of Contents:
I. Introduction.- II. The Issues of Interlinkage.- 1. Environmental Regulation Affecting Trade Flows.- 2. Trade Liberalization Affecting the State of the Environment.- 3. Further Interlinkages.- III. The Regulatory Issue.- 1. Current International Regulation.- 2. Theoretical Background.- 3. Opposing Demands for a Regulatory Change and its Paradigmatic Background.- IV. Divergent Environmental Process Regulation in Open Economies.- 1. Theoretical Approaches.- 2. Empirical Evidence.- 3. Considerations for Austria.- V. Modeling the Environment-Economy Interaction for Austria in a Trade-Focused Computable General Equilibrium Framework.- 1. The Method of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling.- 2. The Austrian Environment and Trade Model.- 3. Policy Simulations — The Effects of Unilateral Policy.- VI. Conclusions.- 1. Categorizing the Issues.- 2. Current International Regulation.- 3. Trade and Environment in the Theoretical Framework.- 4. Trade Measures for Environmental Ends?.- 5. Paradigmatic Background.- 6. Further Regulatory Development.- 7. Effects of Divergent Process Regulation.- 8. The Case of Austria.- 9. Empirical Quantification of the Economic Effects of Unilateral Environmental Action.- Appendix 1 Uruguay Round Decision on Trade and Environment.- Appendix 2 Environmental Policy Shifting the General Equilibrium Supply Curves in a Trade Model.- Appendix 3 A Schematic Social Accounting Matrix.- Appendix 4 Tables.- References — General.- References — CGE.