Institutional Restrictions and their Impact on the Export of Environmental Goods: Case Study; Developing Countries

During the last two decades, with the increase in international exchange of goods and services, environmental problems, including climate change and global pollution, have increased significantly. The global effort to reduce environmental problems has put the importance of production and international trade of environmental goods on the agenda of many developed and developing countries.

Institutional restrictions influence trade and export of these goods. These restrictions include environmental regulations, quality of regulations and rule of law. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of this category of institutional restrictions on the export of pollution management goods in developing countries in the framework of the gravity model. In this article, the environmental goods under study include those goods, which are produced or consumed by industry in order to reduce and manage air and water pollution. The econometric model is estimated by panel data for period 1996-2021 and a sample of 131 developing countries, and 196 export destinations using the fixed effects method.

The results show that the institutional limitation from the perspective of strict environmental regulations and the quality of the institutional environment of the countries of origin has an effect on the export of environmental goods that manage pollution. This result is also true from the point of view of strict environmental regulations of export destinations. Therefore, in addition to the traditional factors affecting international trade, institutional restrictions are strong drivers of the export of pollution management goods in developing countries and their export destinations.

Therefore, policies based on institutional restrictions from the perspective of strict environmental regulations in developing and destination countries help the export flow of environmental goods that manage pollution and lay the foundation for the participation of developing countries in the global and regional value chain of environmental goods.