Emission Embodied in International Trade and Its Responsibility from the Perspective of Global Value Chain: Progress, Trends, and Challenges

Abstract

In the context of economic globalization and production fragmentation, the boom in intermediate and processing trade has made EEIT (emission embodied in international trade) accounting and the recognition of its responsibility more and more complicated, and the drawbacks of traditional gross value statistics more and more conspicuous. The rapid development of global value chain theory in recent years has given rise to a decomposition framework of the trade flow in a country’s export, based on the global value chain, which offers new methods to study EEIT and allocate its responsibility. The combination of global value chain accounting and EEIT research can offer new ways to research EEIT transfer and allocate its responsibility. Utilization of this technique can help understand each country’s “common but differentiated responsibility” in emission reduction. Finally, aiming at the knowledge gaps in current analysis, this paper attempts to discuss the trends, and possible challenges, in research on EEIT, and its responsibility based on the global value chain theory.