The Empirical Study On The Influence Of Trade Openness On Carbon Emissions

The problem of environmental pollution has already been one of the thorniest problems for the whole world, forming a harmony and win-win and sustainable“global village” has become our common view. The emergency of greenhouse effect makes more people realize that fine natural environment is very important for us,therefore, ”how to reduce carbon emission ” usually becomes the main topic in global climate conference. Plenty of scholars begin to study the influence factors of carbon emission, while trade openness attracts many scholars attentions as one of the main influence factors.The paper makes a summary about the carbon emission status of 20 countries whose carbon emission are in the first 20 in the world during the year of 1990 to2014: according to the statistics provided by the Global Carbon Atlas, we may see that the speed up of the process of globalization improves the fluency of trade among different countries and the energy consumption, the carbon emission increases as well while the speed of growth has been slowed down. Furthermore, by analyzing the way how trade openness influence the carbon emission we conclude that environment Kuznets curve、”three effects” hypothesis、the effect of capital-labor、the effect of environment management and the hypothesis of “pollution heavens” are all linked with one another, the latter are the subdivision and explanation for the former theory in proper order. These influence mechanisms reflects the important impact on trade emission brought by the situation of economic development、the circumstances of environment in difference districts、trade openness and the capital transaction.In order to make further study of the influence on carbon emission caused by trade openness, we have selected information of 20 countries whose carbon emission are in the first 20 in the world during the year of 1990 to 2014, including trade openness、net inflow of FDI、per capita GDP and per capita carbon emission, and then we conduct panel co-integration test for these information and conclude that:trade openness and per capita GDP are in positive correlation with per capita carbon emission, what’s more, the positive correlation between per capita GDP and per capita carbon emission is more significant while the relation between the net inflow of FDI and per capita carbon emission are not.On the basis of summarizing the results of empirical study and analyzing the trend of economic development, we make some policy suggestions: to develop low-carbon trade and to establish carbon finance system.