Export trade and smog pollution: Empirical evidence from China

This paper examines the impact of China's export trade on smog pollution. Based on provincial panel data from 2006 to 2016 in China, we use spatial econometric methods to empirically investigate the smog pollution effects of China's export trade from two dimensions, export scale and export structure. It has been found that smog pollution in various regions of China has obvious spatial correlation; China's export trade has a significant positive impact on smog pollution, whether in terms of export scale or export structure. After establishing different forms of spatial weight matrices and considering alternative indicators of smog pollution, the results of this paper are still robust.