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Investigating India’s pollution-intensive ‘dirty’ trade specialisation: analysis with ‘revealed symmetric comparative advantage’ index

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Abstract

This study intends to explore India’s comparative advantage in the pollution-intensive product export with temporal and spatial analysis by applying an alternative measure of revealed comparative advantage index. The emission-intensive manufacturing commodities are mainly chosen as per the list published by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) of India to draw some inferences on India’s pollution haven characteristics. For the spatial analysis, the ‘dirty’ comparative advantage is calculated for all the BRICS countries for the year 2017, and for the temporal analysis, the index value is calculated for 42 product groups at 3 digit SITC level from 2009 to 2017 to examine the structure of ‘dirty’ specialisation in India and its change over time. India is found at the top among the BRICS members for a maximum of 16 in 25 products. Among these 25 sectors, Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa are found having a comparative advantage in 4, 12, 11 and 10 products, respectively. In these comparatively advantageous products, Brazil ranked one in 75% and three in 25% of products. Russia ranked one in 33% and two in 67% of products. India among the BRICS members stood 1st at 62.5, 2nd and 3rd both at 18.75% cases, respectively. Findings reveal that pollution-intensive trade-exposed sectors successfully absorbed the stringent environmental regulation-shocks which brought in an additional burden of compliance cost upon trade competitiveness. The results of this study are more insightful for evaluating India’s recent initiatives for stricter environmental regulations.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. CDM arranges a market-based system of transferring emission credits to the countries which offer verified reductions in emissions. Mostly, the industrialised and developed countries buy these credits from the developing countries to accomplish their Kyoto Protocol committed targets.

  2. The detailed results are shown in Appendix Table 6.

  3. See Appendix Table 7 which exhibits the calculated values of the sectoral RSCA of the ‘dirty’ sectors for the entire period of 2009–2017.

  4. The original Kuznet’s inverted U curve shows the relationship between income inequality and development, and resembled in Grossman and Krueger (1995) in their analysis of trade and environmental economics.

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Autho’r contribution

Conceptualisation - Suvajit Banerjee; introduction - Suvajit Banerjee and Muhammad Iftikhar ul Husnain; data curation - Suvajit Banerjee and Muhammad Aamir Khan; methodology - Suvajit Banerjee; results and discussion - Suvajit Banerjee, Muhammad Aamir Khan, Somnath Hazra; writing—original draft preparation - Suvajit Banerjee; writing—review and editing - Somnath Hazra, Muhammad Aamir Khan, Muhammad Iftikhar ul Husnain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Politics, Vidya Bhavana, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India

    Suvajit Banerjee

  2. Consulting Economist and Visiting Faculty, School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

    Somnath Hazra

  3. Department of Economics, Comsats University, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Muhammad Aamir Khan & Muhammad Iftikhar ul Husnain

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  1. Suvajit Banerjee
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  4. Muhammad Iftikhar ul Husnain
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Correspondence to Muhammad Aamir Khan.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Calculated RSCA of BRICS members for the ‘Dirty’ products
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Table 7 Over time change in RSCA index value at 3 digit level
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Banerjee, S., Hazra, S., Khan, M.A. et al. Investigating India’s pollution-intensive ‘dirty’ trade specialisation: analysis with ‘revealed symmetric comparative advantage’ index. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 30153–30167 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12790-4

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