new III Workshop on Economics of the Mediterranean, Barcelona June 26 - 27.
Preliminary program!

 

Recent comment from a young Tunisian research economist:
"I am persuaded that the community of researchers interested by the MENA economies need the kind of structure and focal point that is the CREMed."

Papers from two recently completed CREMed Research Projects: International trade, transport and the environment in the Euro-Med Area  and Moroccans’ Assimilation in Spain: Family-Based versus Labor-Based Migration are now available in the CREMed Working Paper Series.

Research


Turkey

Working Papers #10



 

Title:
Is the road to regional integration paved with pollution convergence? The case of the Euro-Med Agreements
Authors:
L. Baghdadi (University of 7th November at Carthage, Tunisia and Tunis University), I. Martínez-Zarzoso (Universitat Jaume I, University of Goettigen, Germany), C. Suárez (Universitat Jaume I), H. Zitouna (FSEGN and LIM-MES Polytechnic School of Tunisia, University of Carthage, Tunisia).
Date:
November 2011
Keywords:

Pollution haven hypothesis, convergence, CO2 emissions, Euromed Agreements, difference-in-difference
JEL codes:
F18; O13; L60; Q43

Abstract
:

This paper evaluates the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on carbon dioxide emissions convergence for a cross-section of 182 countries over the period 1980 to 2008, paying particular attention to Mediterranean and European Union countries. To overcome the endogeneity problem of the FTA variable, a propensity score matching approach is first used to match country pairs. Next a model that decomposes relative CO2 emissions into scale, composition and technique effects is estimated for the whole panel and for the matched sample using difference-in-difference techniques. The main results indicate that CO2 emissions of pair of countries that belong to an FTA tend to converge, and they converge at a higher rate for more advanced integration agreements. In particular, we find that emissions converge more rapidly for NAFTA and EU-27 countries than for Euro-Med countries. This paper presents research from a CREMed Research Project.

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