Abstract
Extensive research has been carried out on the “Belt and Road” initiative, most of it focusing on geographical economy and international trade. However, there is a lack of research on the carbon emissions efficiency of the countries along the “Belt and Road,” especially regarding the impact of freight trade. To address this research gap, this paper first employs a metafrontier nonradial directional distance function to measure the carbon emission efficiency of 32 countries along the “Belt and Road” from 1990 to 2014. It then examines the role of freight trade. Our main research findings are as follows. Firstly, the carbon emission efficiency of the countries along the “Belt and Road” is generally low. Among them, Russia and Central Asia are mainly due to the large between-group gap in carbon emission efficiency, while Southeast Asia, Western Asia and North Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe are mainly due to the large within-group gap. Secondly, freight trade promotes carbon emission efficiency, but it will aggravate the gap between the contemporaneous technology and the group technology. Freight trade mainly promotes the contemporaneous carbon emission efficiency (CTCEI) and group-frontier carbon emission efficiency (ITCEI) of low fossil energy dependent countries, and the metafrontier carbon emission efficiency (GTCEI) of high fossil energy dependent countries. Thirdly, foreign direct investment (FDI) has a significant negative effect on a host country’s ITCEI and GTCEI, and it will decrease the gap between the group technology and the metafrontier technology. However, freight trade can effectively prevent the entry of FDI, thereby indirectly improving carbon emission efficiency and reducing carbon emission gap.
Highlights
Since the Chinese government puts forward the major initiatives of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” (“Belt and Road”), the economic and trade relations between the countries along the “Belt and Road” have entered a new phase of comprehensive and rapid development
Our results show that freight trade is conducive to improving carbon emission efficiency
GTCEI and ITCEI are significantly smaller than contemporaneous carbon emission efficiency (CTCEI), it indicates that the carbon emission efficiency measured by traditional nonparametric methods will be significantly overestimated
Summary
Since the Chinese government puts forward the major initiatives of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” (“Belt and Road”), the economic and trade relations between the countries along the “Belt and Road” have entered a new phase of comprehensive and rapid development. Peters [15] examined the input-output data of 87 countries in 2001 and found that international trade increased a host country’s carbon emission intensity. Sun et al [21] analyzed the CO2 emissions reflected in Russia’s international trade from 1995 to 2014 based on an input-output method and found that Russia is a net exporter of carbon dioxide. Erefore, with the continuous advancement of the “Belt and Road” initiative, will the increasingly frequent freight trade among countries result in carbon leakage and reduced carbon emission efficiency? Erefore, considering the heterogeneity of regional technological frontiers, how to accurately measure the carbon emission efficiency of countries along the “Belt and Road”? Is paper uses 32 countries along the “Belt and Road” as research samples from 1990 to 2014 to examine the impact of freight trade on a host country’s carbon emissions efficiency.
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