Climate change, geography and trade agreements: A perspective of Asian bilateral trade

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0320363 April 25, 2025 5 / 23 PLOS One Trade agreement, climate change and geography after trade openness and that the different structure of the present economic geography of Japan is prejudiced toward the east. Economic activities that have shifted to the eastward ori- gin within Japan could have started at the beginning of the port era during the middle of the 19th century, which is called the “missing quarter-century.” The significance of textiles and the silk industry at domestic and international trade levels is encouraged by the specific character- istics of Japan’s economy and geography around the turn of the 19th century. The findings demonstrate that Japanese silk fabric production and skilled labor may improve when dispersed between two regions, similar to the East and the West in an autarky that is consistent with historical observations. At Autarky, firms work in western regions, although they have a disadvantage in location in terms of raw material prices because this region has large local markets. Consequently, firms located in the West exit the market and enter markets in the East that have migrant skilled workers. In the East, a new spatial equilib- rium takes place with international trade. Economic activities and mobile resources are more agglomerated in the east because of Japan’s opening up during the missing quarter-century, encouraging the economic center of production in east Japan. Nexus between CO2 emissions and trade

This strand of literature describes the correlation between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and trade. A substantial number of studies analyzes the effect of trade on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for bilateral, multilateral and region to region. For instance, [41–43] argue that trade openness upsurges the CO2 emission level. Precisely, exports contribute to growth in greenhouse emissions, however, signing the trade agreement between countries decline the influence of trade on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, imports also have positive impacts on carbon emissions, although exports cause the reduction in carbon emissions after signing the trade agreements. Subsequently, other studies also debate that trade openness cause augment the greenhouse effect in the short and long runs. Another study by [44,45] investigated the role of trade in environment, suggesting that global trade has worsened environmental pollution effects. The reason behind that trade openness upsurges the export level which causes the increase domes- tic production via expansion in scale of industries. Consequently, mass energy consumption is required to achieve the level of output and upsurged CO2 emissions through economic activ- ities. Subsequently, [46] analyze the CO2 emissions embodies in bilateral trade between Japan and China, demonstrating that trade volume has a remarkable impact on CO2 emissions in positive inclination. In the contrast, [47] argue that trade openness can have negative effects on CO2 emis- sions in OECD and industrialized countries respectively. Moreover, [48] discussed that trade

openness may drastically adversely affect pollutants, especially energy. Besides, [49,50] also investigate that trade has a reticence effect on carbon dioxide emissions in OECD countries. However, it has positive impact on emissions in non-OECD countries. Conversely, [51] argue that trade openness drastically reduces per capita CO2 emissions in Korean economy, pre- cisely, this negative relationship scale effect, technique effect and structural effect. However, mitigation effect is governed by technical effect for nexus between trade and CO2 emissions. It is worth notable that studies did not find the consistent accord on the correlation concerning the trade and CO2 emissions. Aforementioned literature emphasizes on the association between CO2 emissions and trade openness from international perspective. Meanwhile, a scanty studies has indicated that aggregate global trade cannot determine the separate effects of exports and imports on CO2 emissions [52–56]. Therefore, Hasanov et al. (2021) investigate the impact of exports and