TITLE:
Trade Benefits and Environmental Costs of GVCS: A Case Study of the BRICS
AUTHORS:
Xiaohong Yu, Jiajia Fan, Yihang Luo, Xiaoyuan Zhu, Yuchen Zhang, Xiaofei Long
KEYWORDS:
BRICS, GVCS, Export Added Value, Carbon Embodied in Export, Source of Imbalance between the Trade Benefits and Environmental Costs
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.12 No.1,
March
6,
2023
ABSTRACT: As the international trading system has developed with the division of Global value Chains (GVCS), the export trade of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) has grown rapidly. The resulting growth of carbon emissions has drawn wide attention from the international community, necessitating the comparison of the trade benefits and environmental costs of the BRICS participation in GVCS. Based on the Eora database, this paper constructs a decomposition framework for the calculation of export value-added and embodied carbon, based on a multi-region input-output (MRIO) model. The trade benefits and environmental costs paid by the BRICS’ total exports from 1990 to 2015 were measured and the imbalance was analyzed, along with the causes. The results show that the main value-added and carbon embodied in the BRICS’ exports originate from their own countries, and the domestic value-added content of the BRICS’ exports decreased while the foreign value-added content increased.