The Global Sourcing of Green Products

Abstract

While international trade in green products is seen as a key factor in facilitating a global transition toward low-carbon economies, our knowledge of firm sourcing strategies for such products is limited. In this paper, we examine how global sourcing strategies for green products are affected by the stringency of country environmental standards and green technological development within a country. Because of the importance of observable and credible sustainable manufacturing practices throughout firm global value chains and unique knowledge requirements for green products, we expect country institutional contexts to have different effects on the global sourcing decisions for green versus non-green products. Our findings using data on U.S. imports for more than 5,000 distinct products over the 2002-2019 period show that green products are more likely to be sourced from countries with higher environmental standards and advanced technology, while non-green product sourcing patterns align with prior research, which emphasizes the appeal of lower environmental standards and cost-efficiency considerations. Overall, this paper identifies an important boundary condition for the pollution haven effect in global sourcing and unlike prior work that argues that higher environmental standards hurt exporters, suggests that such standards benefit green product exporters.

Speaker Intro

程煜熙，英国利物浦大学管理学院（University of Liverpool Management School）助理教授。研究领域主要为国际商务和战略管理。其研究方向主要侧重于理解企业如何进行全球贸易链的结构、战略性调整，以应对国际商业环境中新的挑战，例如意识形态的极化、地缘政治紧张以及国家之间可持续发展要求的不同。此外，其热衷于理解跨境人力资本流动（例如移民、难民现象）对企业人力资本配置带来的机遇与挑战。其研究成果发表于国际顶级会议，并获得奖项。