Empirical research on the relationship of export trade and carbon emissions

Abstract

In this research, firstly we calculate the carbon emissions of China from 1978 to 2009 by the Guide to the calculation of carbon emissions from IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), secondly we analyze the long term and short term relationships between carbon emissions and the exports in China by the cointegration theory and the error correction model separately, and through granger causality test, we conclude that there is a unidirectional causality between carbon emission and the exports in China. These results indicate that goods exports have been an important factor accelerating China carbon emission in recent years. Besides, we also predict the carbon emissions during the 12th Five-Year Plan of China by dynamic iterative prediction method. At last we propose the measures on the reduction of Carbon emission from the perspective of international trade.